Oregon My Oregon

Last week we all piled in the Fergy van and paid homage to my beautiful home state of Oregon.  We traveled the 13 hr trip in two days.  The first night we stayed the night at my Grandma Hogan's House in Hermiston, OR.

The next morning we got up early and finished the trip to my parents house.  It was just in time too because ne noticed right as we got to grandma &pa Potts house Cami was really cranky and pulling on her ears so firsts things first we took her to the doctor Robert (my brother) worked for, who was so nice he saw her for free, and he confirmed that she did indeed have an ear infection.  Oh children have the worst timing!!! While Cami was in her misery Phoebe was in her doggies heaven, she never wanted to leave their sides she even tried to sleep in the doggies bed.

 During our trip we took the obligatory trip to the coast. This time it was only a day trip, which was plenty for our gang.  We started by  going to the Hatfield Marine Center to look at the octopus and play in the tide pool.  Phoebe loved the "starsfish" and the stickies, ie anemones.

After the marine center we hit the beach.  It was a beautiful day for the Oregon Coast, but still a bit windy and cool, so coats were needed.  We buried all the kids legs to try and keep them warm, but as you can see Phoebe was not much for staying in one spot for 2 seconds.

Cami learned to crawl while visiting Grandma&pa Potts (just like Phoebe did) and she kept crawling towards the ocean; she looked just like a baby sea turtle making it way to the sea.

Phoebe ran all over the beach with Uncle Robert.  She loved the water even though it was about 40 degrees and it stung my foot to touch.  At one point she even sat in the water in her clothes, then of course she sat back on the sand so she was covered in sand.  The rest of the night she told us she had no pants on because she had "a sandbox in her pants."

Josh was happy to sit in one spot the whole time like my angel boy.  I laughed when I saw this picture of him  making a sour face.  Then if you scroll down to his twins picture she made the exact same face.  Oh twinners are funny!

Here are a couple more pics of the twiners.  Josh just liked digging in the sand and Cami just liked eating the sand.  She is becoming more and more like Phoebe everyday, it is starting to make me very nervous!

After a good long while we made the hour trip back to grandpa&ma's house.

During our trip we also gt to enjoy a family and friends BBQ.  It was really nice to see lots of people I rarely ever get to see anymore.  Here is a picture of Phoebe in the back yard with Miles (the son of my old friend Brooke) riding my moms deer statues.  We also got time to sneak in a visit with Josh, the original.

As of last year Grandma&pa made it a requirement that once during our visit we have to go to Waterfront Park to ride the carousel.  Phoebe LOVED it & got to ride it twice.  The first time she rode Big Sky and the second time it was Razzel Dazzel.  Note the emblem engraved on Razzel Dazzel.  It made Cory and I laugh; a local ward must have painted it.

On the last night  of our visit we had an early birthday for Cory.  It was a surprise for him so my mom made the Banana Split cake he requested I make for his actual birthday while we were out picking 42.5 lbs of blueberries to bring home.  Cory got a very nice hummingbird feeder & some books he requested along with a lovely rendition of Happy Birthday sung by my brother.

After cake we had one last hot tub party, don't worry we also swam just about every other day of our visit too.  All the kids LOVED, LOVED, LOVED the pool.  Going swimming was one of the only things we could do to make Cami happy when she was especially fussy at times

We had to include these pictures because they were so funny to Cory & I.  This is my parents version of making things kids proof.

On the way home we stopped back in Hermiston to visit my aunt and we got caught in a dust storm.  This is what it looked like, I know it's hard to see, when we got back on the freeway.

I have to say this was one of my favorite trips home as of yet because we made it a point to not overbook ourselves and so we had plenty of time to relax and enjoy ourselves.

Here are just a few random cute pictures from the trip.

Backyard Meham

Ever year right around July/August our yard starts to look pretty sad.  This is due to a couple of factors:

1. We don't water enough or 2. we bought the wrong kind plants and/or flowers.  This is how our lovely back yard looked right before we left for Oregon.  Note the grass is half dead, the Delphinium fell over, & the Yarrow made a 3ft forest for spiders & mushrooms.  Overall, things looked really bad! 

Luckily it could easily be fixed after a trip to the sod farm to buy $14 of new sod and to Enghs Nursery to buy perennials at 50% off.  Now our yard is once again pretty place of refuge & fun.

A Cosmic Night in July

For July's date night I went to the moon and back, well not literally but it was cosmic themed that is.  We made this date a double and invited Cory's sister Megan and finance Blake over. We started by each taking a window pane and decorating it with window markers of our cosmic universe. If you are curious whose is whose here is the key: Cory-white, Jennie-blue, Blake-red, & Megan- yellow.  A few highlights to take note of when looking at the windows. Cory's was the most artistic, I had a star named after my hubby in my window, Blake had a cow jumping over the moon/Megan (Phoebe loves this window because she thinks Blake's cow is an alligator or so she keeps telling me) & Megan hung a picture of Blake in the stars.

After admiring our art work we went to the back yard where I decorated the fence with silver and glow in the dark stars.  We donned on our cool glow jewelry that didn't really work and enjoyed roasting Starbursts (staying with the cosmic theme) and smores.

For fun I found the largest marshmallows EVER and we roasted those.  Here is Megan barely being able to fit her smores in her mouth.  The marshmallows were fun and different but not really practical and one is enough for anyone to eat.

After our treats we just relaxed outside and just stargazed, luckily it was a pretty warm night.  As you can see Phoebe joined us for our date.  When she saw that I was decorating the yard and that Aunt Maggie & Blake were her she started yelling very loudly "Mom I want In"  (she gets in and out mixed up) eventually I let aunt Megan go get her to join in on the party.

This has so far been one of my very favorite dates of the year!

Look Whose Sitting Up

I can't believe my babies are well on their way to becoming toddlers now.  This little one can sit up all on her own now and I always find her now just sitting in her crib waiting for me to come get her.

Here are the two redheaded cuties playing together (you can see brother still requires the help of a chair to sit up well) with an old toy of Phoebs.  I love that they will just sit side by side and play so cutely together.

Fourth of Julyish Festivities

This year since the holiday was on Sunday most of the celebrations and festivities took place on the 3rd & 5th of July.  We started the fun off with introducing Phoebs to an all-american treat, PoP Rocks!  You can see what she thought of it at first.  It only took her a second however to love it and want to devour the whole sack.

We then enjoyed a wonderful breakfast at the church with all of our ward buddies.  They also had a primary parade.  We don't have the largest primary so below is pictured the majority of what the parade was. Kids taking turns riding on the golf cart with a few stragglers following behind on their decorated bikes.

Immediately following breakfast we drove up to Afton,Wy to join some other Ferguson's (Dennis, Julie & Afton) & celebrate the holiday with Cory's Grandma Wilkes and aunt Carolyn.  We always have fun at grandmas house doing a lot of marshmallow roasting as Phoebs demonstrates so well. (If you could have seen her mallow closer you  would see tons of dirt, rocks and grass on it from the 26 times she dropped it on the ground or just laid it down, don't worry she never ate the mallow she just liked to pretend she was roasting it.)

We also got to enjoy a fireworks show from the comfort of grandma's drive way.  Phoebs now LOVES fireworks and anytime she hears a bang she aks if its fireworks. (You can barely see a firework starting to open above Cory's head.)

Phoebe also loved helping daddy make wood tepees for the fire and picking all of grandma's fuzzies from the ground, thanks to many cotton trees Phoebe was in bliss with all the fuzzies that were everywhere. 

There was also a lot of walks (one where Phoebe saw a cow poop and was so intrigued by it she still talks about it), napping and of course TONS of grandma cuddling time.

Here are the three cute babes all packed away to travel home.

On the way home daddy didn't think ahead and accidentally put a whole box of Lucky Charms in reach of Phoebe so it wasn't but 10 minutes before Phoebe discovered this error and slowly began to devour all the mallows out of one whole Lucky Charms box; luckily for Phoebs she sits in the back of the van and out of mommy's reach so I couldn't even stop her.  Once we were home our neighbors began to set off their fireworks  so we sat in our room and watched them all from our window.  After about an hour we called it a night  even though they were still going off because the kids had had a long day.  I however felt obligated to watch one of our neighbors fireworks show because they could only be described as totally plastered and were doing the STUPIDEST things ever (no one sober would do such dumb stuff such as running and jumping over/through fountain style fireworks WHILE they are going off) and it was inevitable that someone was going to get hurt and I felt the police would need a sober witness to describe what happened.

To finish off our weekend of festivities on Monday the 5th we invited ourselves over to Fergy Mom's house to celebrate a belated 4th of July BBQ & water party.