Aa, A, K & M: i'm alive...but my blog is not!

here i am...giving some much needed cpr and electric shock treatment to my blog. man, i have so many things i could have blogged over the last five (or more!) months...but life has been too busy. the five minute version:

in may we went to sunriver for a family wedding. it was awesome...we always love to go and i see we have managed to make it every two years! sunriver holds a lot of great memories for us - aa and i used to go there every year for a little getaway. our first trip with kellen was shortly before he turned one and i remember that he learned to patty-cake there, including the "roll it" with his arms and he was so proud of himself! that first trip we found a great tree stump along the bike paths to take a picture of kellen. we have managed to find that same stump the last two times we've gone and now have a collection of photos of each of them on the same stump. i hope that the collection continues to grow! what a difference two years makes - look at my baby girl!

a week after sunriver, the kids and i took a little trip to the beach with sarah (my sister in law) and the boys and jan (my mother in law). we stayed two nights and it was really fun...but a little crazy (what do you expect with a 4, 3, 2 and 1 year old!). between my sister's kids and these boys, bennett and sammy, my kids are rich in the cousin department and it's oh so fun to see them all together!

Sammy (1), Maya (2), Kellen (4) and Bennett (3)

for mother's day i woke up to breakfast made by aa and the kids...with two special leaves the kids had specifically picked out for my place setting! we then went on a nice 1 mile hike at the audoban society. it was a perfect little loop with a duck pond at the beginning and end. we stopped at the half way point and enjoyed some little treats we had gotten at elephants. it would have been perfect, except maya decided to take too big of a bit and proceed to gag and then puke all over herself and the trail. yuck. needless say we got out of there as quickly as possible after using the water from our bottle to clean as much as we could off of her and the trail. we quickly forgot about it all when we decided to go to salt and straw, the best ice cream shop for a little four sample tasting board. yum. the kids devoured it, crazy flavors and all.

when you work backwards like this...some milestones are given away! big ones, like first haircuts!!! may 6, we finally took maya in to chop off her locks. i'd actually been wanting to bob her hair for awhile and after seeing a picture that a friend posted of her looking like a wild cavewoman, i convinced her to go! we'd been asking her for months if she wanted a haircut and she would always say no...when i suggested it that weekend she said yes, so i guess we were both really ready! i do miss being able to put it up in cute pig tails, but the bob is so cute and so easy. i actually think she looks more like a baby with the little short bob than with her wild head of hair, so that's a bonus too! she was perfect - sat stoicly still and was thrilled to finally get a lollipop just like kellen gets when he gets a haircut!

nervously excited in her pink convertible chair!

first cut! sniff sniff

the look on her face the entire time!

my sweet baby girl with her new do!

hooray for lollipops!

our new(ish) house has three parks within walking distance - it's awesome. here are some fun pics of the kids at the park. kellen is in his pj's because he had a 24 hour bout of a stomach bug (we all actually caught it after him - LOTS of puking, ugh) and was finally feeling good enough to get outside, something we all needed!

i'll end tonight's five minute update on the tulip festival. the kids and i met aaron's mom down at tulip festival on a beautiful sunny day in late april. we stopped and got some picnic goods at whole foods and then went to enjoy the beautiful colors. it was actually my first time there, so fun to see the fields of flowers and lots of fun activities for the kids. here's a slew of pics from the day.