First Grade!

Here's Weston on his first day of homeschool. He is now a big first-grader! This year I've chosen to use My Father's World Homeschool Curriculum. So far we are both enjoying it! We've been reviewing the letters and sounds, working on phonics blends, sound recognition, math, memory verses, an art lesson, a science lesson and much more. In addition to the core curriculum I'm using a couple of other recommended reading lists for chapter books to read to both Weston and Grace. They've loved Henry Huggins and Homer Price!
Grace and Elsie don't want to be left out. Grace has been practicing her letters and Elsie has been drawing and coloring lots of circles in an old workbook :). Although it's rewarding and fun, I'm realizing what a challenge homeschooling is going to be. I can only hope to be successful if I am daily relying on God to give me patience and wisdom. On my own I'm just cranky and tired. Good thing God does not leave me on my own!

Pie!

This week I tried a new pie recipe from the Allrecipes.com website. It was a triple-berry apple pie. It was soooooo good! Weston helped me with the crust and Grace did the cut-out hearts. The two recipes were French Pastry Pie Crust and Apple-Berry Pie
I used the frozen three-berry mix from Costco which I thawed and drained instead of the berries the recipe calls for. I added a bit of flour and a bit more cornstarch to thicken the filling. I also peeled and diced the apples and stirred them right in. Yum!!! I've had great success with finding good recipes online lately. How can you go wrong when hundreds of people have rated the recipe and suggested changes to make it better!

Family Hike

On Sunday our family went on a hike to Little Zigzag Falls on Mt. Hood. It was a beautiful day and we enjoyed our hike very much. The actual hike was only about a half mile round trip but it was perfect for us considering Elsie walked part of the way and I had to carry her part of the way. We were reminded how much we enjoy living so close to nature (lakes, mountains, rivers, and the ocean all within a 90 minute drive)!

The Dahl Girls

Can you spot the visitor on this flower?

Mountain Men

The sun looked pretty shining through the girls' messy hair :)

After our hike we drove up to Trillium Lake to check out our next potential hike. Apparently there is a two mile trail around the lake that is groomed enough for strollers. The lake was beautiful with Mt. Hood reflected in the water.

Noah Love

Brothers in matching outfits. I don't think I'll get away with this for too much longer :)

Noah and Gracie.

Summer Vacation 2009 (Part 1)

The first part of our summer vacation started out a bit rocky. The day we were supposed to leave for the beach Elsie awoke during the night with the flu at about 2 a.m. She was up about every half hour throwing up all night long. At about 4:30 a.m. I started in with throwing up. Not what we had envisioned for the first day of our summer vacation! :)
We had partially packed the van the night before, so Mike continued to get the rest of the stuff packed as well as taking care of all the kids and me. In the afternoon I felt well enough to go ahead and leave for the beach and Elsie seemed to be feeling better. Not far into our drive I knew I wasn't completely better! We ended up having to stop three times for Elsie and I to throw up on our way to Waldport. We finally made it to the beach! Not a day I'd like to repeat soon :)
We stayed at an awesome house at Bayshore Estates in Waldport! It was almost brand new and very clean. It had an enclosed atrium area with a sandbox and was only 2 minutes from the beach access. It was perfect for a family with young children! My parents joined us for 2 of the 3 nights and we had a great time. The beach was a bit chilly but turned sunny about halfway through the trip. We didn't take many photos but here are a few from the beach.

Elsie, Grace and Weston enjoying the sand. My dad is way off in the distance flying the kite.

Papa Craig and Weston flying our huge shark kite. The wind was biting, but it was great for the kite!

I picked up this gentleman at the beach. He thought I was cute so I decided to take him home :)

My sand kids :)

When it came time to pack up and head out our van wouldn't start. We prayed hard and finally figured out our battery was dead from leaving part of the kids' DVD player plugged in. One of the maintenance men from the rental office came and kindly gave us a jump (thank you, God). We also found out my mom picked up the flu from us and had a bad case once she was home in Bend. Sorry Mom!

After leaving Waldport about 11 a.m. we drove up the coast to the Tillamook Ice Cream Factory. We had fun watching the cheese-making process and eating some fresh ice cream but we were unprepared for how crowded it would be. We agreed it was probably not worth the effort with our kids being so young and the place being so crowded. We arrived home at about 5 p.m. to 106 degree weather. Yikes! The kids were doing great and our house was an oven so we decided to go ahead and make the drive to Spokane that night. We stopped at the Dalles for Taco Time (Cinna-Crustos are my new fav. I'm sure there couldn't be much more horribly unhealthy food than deep-fried tortilla swimming in cinnamon and sugar, but oh man, are they ever good!). We finally arrived at John and Shirley's after midnight. All the kids did great and Noah only fussed off and on the last hour of the trip. Not bad for over 9 hours in the car in one day!

Summer Vacation 2009 (Part 2)

Tuesday evening of our vacation week we left Gresham for Spokane and didn't arrive until 12:30 a.m. on Wednesday. Are we crazy? Well, we figured it was so hot in Gresham we wouldn't get much sleep anyway. We might as well be in the air-conditioned car on the way up and enjoy John and Shirley's air-conditioned home earlier. The kids did pretty well despite 9+ hours of car time that day. Our itinerary for the day ended up being 11am leave Waldport, 12:30 eat lunch in Lincoln City, 2pm visit the Tillamook Icecreamery, 5:15pm arrive in Gresham, 6:15pm leave Gresham for Spokane, 12:30am Wednesday arrive Spokane. We were pleasantly surprised at how well Noah did with such a long day of driving!
Unfortunately, Mike ended up with the flu all day on Thursday. This was a nasty virus! We're praying it ends with Mike. ***Update: Shirley caught the flu the day we left and Weston had it about 3 days after that. I've never seen such a contagious flu bug!
On Friday we all went to the park for an hour to let the kids ride bikes. Here are John and Weston in front of a little waterfall. There were lots of turtles swimming around in the pond below.

Here's Noah enjoying the view.

Here are Weston and Grace between last year's surprise (the trampoline) and this year's surprise (the pool). We all agree that Shirley is enjoying the toys she never got but always wanted as a child ;)

It looks like we put our children in a cage :) One of the highlights of vacation was piling on the trampoline Saturday night to look at the stars. Weston saw his first shooting star and the grownups all agreed it might have been the brightest one we've ever seen. Mike and I also enjoyed a date on Saturday while John and Shirley watched the kids. It was sooooo nice to get away for the day and I'm already wanting another date!

Weston, Elsie and I enjoying the pool.

Noah enjoying the pool this evening. It was pretty cold but he was a good sport.

Elsie and Noah in the pool. The turtle floatie was courtesy of Aunt Christi. Eric came by and joined us for some swimming later on.

Evian Roller Babies international version

Happy Independence Day!

We celebrated the 4th of July at my Aunt Peggy's house which has a great view of the fireworks on Pilot Butte in Bend. The kids had never seen real fireworks before. They were pretty impressed!

Noah made the best face in this photo :) He looks completely shocked at something.

We couldn't get a good flag shot.

Nightgowns

My mom bought the girls these cute nightgowns. They wore them all day yesterday and last night until I finally made them change this morning.

Camping with Memaw and Papa

A few weeks ago Weston and Grace got to go camping with my parents at Walton Lake in Eastern Oregon. The highlight of the trip was all the fish the kids caught with Weston's Nemo fishing pole. My dad said it only took about 30 seconds for Weston to hook the first fish. Here are a few photos my mom took of the trip.
Grace informed my that Weston caught many fish but she caught the biggest fish!

This is right before Grace caught her fish.

I think this photo is really sweet. It made me remember what it felt like to be a child and not be in a hurry for anything or worried about getting dirty.

Grace was nervous the fish would flop around and get her :) The look on my dad's face is great. He was so amazed at how quickly the kids were catching fish. Sadly, my dad didn't catch any :)