I think Noah was more impressed with the spoon than his cupcake.
This is Noah crying when his genius mother let go of his hand for a second when his candle was lit. He burnt his finger and got his feelings hurt. You'd think we'd figure these things out by child #4, but apparently not :)
This is Elsie's party outfit. Every woman's nightmare!
Everyone but Noah opened his gifts.
Digging the cake!
Eating presents.
He's happy now that he's had some sugar.
The masterpiece ark cake!
Noah fought a table today and the table won :( Mike and I feel badly that we didn't anchor a small table to the wall like we talked about. I'm pretty sure it will end up a black eye. Probably one of the first injuries of many as Noah is pretty adventuresome! A few weeks ago I was in the kitchen with my hands in raw beef when Noah climbed up on the kitchen table and dumped out a glass of water. None of my other kids climbed that high at barely one year old!!!
Here's the big man standing on his own. He can manage a few long seconds but not much more at this point. Noah will be one year-old on Saturday! Sorry the photo is blurry, I had the camera on "landscape" for some reason :)
Sisters goofing around.
This past weekend we took a little excursion we've been wanting to do for a while now. We drove to Hood River then turned South on Hwy 35 through all the fruit orchards to circle around behind Mt. Hood. While on Mt. Hood we did a small hike at Trillium Lake. You can see the day was beautiful!
The 2 mile hike at Trillium is smooth enough to take a stroller on. We discovered, even with a stroller, 2 miles is the limit for our family :) The kids were very tired and hungry by the time we reached the van.
Looking at a dead fish in the lake.
Noah the hiker :)
This was at the start of the hike. The kids wanted to stop and look at things so often that the 2 miles took about an hour and a half. 
This picture was taken at a little farm near Hood River. We picked up some delicious corn on the cob but discovered apples aren't in season yet. We might try to make another trip in early October to get some fresh apples and enjoy the harvesty feel :) 
We're all a bit squinty as we're looking into the sun.
Weston took this photo. Not bad for a six year-old!
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! 
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
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. 
Brothers in matching outfits. I don't think I'll get away with this for too much longer :)
Noah and Gracie. 
