July 2016

New Gig

Here's a pic of the new place I get to go to work every day. Pretty sweet. 

Olympic Trials

The University of Oregon was hosting the Olympic Trails at Hayward field, so we took the kids down there to check it out.  They had a lot of track and field events that kids could participate in to get a taste of what the athletes were here for.  The kids enjoyed sprinting, doing the hurdles, high jump & long jump.   

Nova's First Year
Nova also celebrated her one year mark. Here she is digging into some lovely chocolate cake:

4th of July
Our ward had a nice breakfast at the church to celebrate the 4th of July.  Ryzen won a prize for having a festive costume.

Afterwards we drove to Corvallis The kids had a lot of fun throwing whipper-snappers, twirling sparklers, and watching a pile of snakes grow together.

Enchanted Forest
Kari had to leave town for half a week for work, and with Nate having long hours at work, her kids stayed over at Grandma and Grandpa Chris' house.  Grandma and Grandpa were kind enough to take Kari's kids, and invite ours to go with them to the Enchanted Forest.  The kids had a blast.  Aria, Zade, and Ryzen were able to go on most of the rides. Since Nova is so little, Tara ended up holding her most of the time.

The next day, Kari's kids came over to our house and had a sleepover.  All the girls ended up staying in Aria's room. They all got along really well, and the girls were sad to leave to go back home.  We're glad to be able to live close enough for our kids to have these type of opportunities to bond with their cousins.  

New Home
We've also been trying to get settled into our new house.  It's bigger than our last place, so there are a bunch of rooms that look empty. We've been having a hard time finding furniture we like to fill the place.  Although it's hard, we know we just have to be patient.

We really love the views into the backyard. Our neighbors even have horses.  Pretty cool.

Cat Infestation
The one thing about the house that we didn't expect was the large number of feral cats that are living in the backyard. When talking with our neighbor, he informed us that the prior owners had 18 cats, and fed the feral cats in the neighborhood.  Apparently the the feral cats live in the two trees by our patio.  They must've had babies, because after a diligent count, we were shocked to find out that there were 15 cats living here. The city of Eugene apparently doesn't pick them up. They do however allow you to trap the cats and the local Humane Society will spay/neuter them. Afterwards, the cats have to be returned back to the place you found them.  That's not what we wanted to hear, but at least we can keep the population from expanding.

Since they were starving, Aria started feeding them. We probably shouldn't have let that start, but now they come to the sliding glass door on a daily basis.  Here are just a few of them.

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U Pick
Our neighbors down the street have a U-Pick blueberry patch.  We took the kids over there and loaded up.

Art Bus

We found out there's a community Art Bus that visits different parks in Eugene each day.

Pond Rescue

There's a small pond coming off of the Amazon Creek near our house that's started drying up.  Tara noticed this on a walk and decided it was time to save the little critters (fish, crawdads, and tadpoles.) She got a big bucket and scooped them up.  They then lived in our little kiddie pool for a few days before we were able to take them over to a deep part of the creek and find them a new home.  

Tara's feet got pretty muddy in the process. Aria called them "monster feet."

Here's the kids checking out the little guys right after they were scooped up.

Here's a pic of the main creek:

Activity Day Girls' Camp
Our ward put on a two-day camp for girls in the ward that Aria was able to participate in. Tara volunteered to help for one of the days at the canoe station.  They had a nice time.

Lynette and Parker
We headed up to the temple and stopped by the wedding reception for Stephen Blunck's sister.  It was beautiful.  They held the reception in their large backyard.  It was pretty cool.  They even had some nice places for the kids to play.

Sadly, we somehow didn't get any pics of the bride and groom. :(

And of course, to end this travelogue, we have to include a gratuitous baby photo. Nova's hair looks so different when it's not sticking up everywhere. :)