Company Picnic, 2011

I'm jumping all over the place in terms of chronology. This post is about mid-August, the post below (Tigger) is from mid-September. Such is blogging, I suppose.

Anyway, in August we went to Hagg Lake for the ole VAEA picnic. It was pretty fun. Thank goodness I wasn't the only one to bring beers.

Elizabeth enjoyed herself, especially as there was lots of candy disgorged by pinatas that she fastidiously collected and then methodically ate. As you can see, her tongue turned blue from candy-ingestion.


Plus, we went swimming and hiking and had a lot of fun.


I suppose there's no point in mentioning the clown decapitation.

Thank You, Aunt Teresa

The other day we came home from a day out-and-about, to find a package that turned out to be from Aunt Teresa. Inside, among other things, was a Tigger costume and a baby abacus.

Who gets a Tigger costume, complete with padded belly, out of nowhere, for free!?

In the immortal words of Yakov Smirnoff: "What a country!"

Best. Slide. Ever.

I really like the design of this slide at Oxbow Park.  It is so much safer than conventional slides, and doubles the fun!

It seems that if good design always won out, this particular piece of playground equipment would be altogether unremarkable.

As it is, this if the first time I've ever seen one.

Elizabeth likes raw corn

'Nuff said.

First Day of School!?

I'm still having trouble grasping the reality of the fact that Elizabeth Rose is now attending pre-school. To coin a phrase: they grow up so fast!!





I considered taking her first day of pre-school off from work, but decided it wasn't a good idea to make too big a deal about it. However, Elizabeth encouraged me tonight at dinner to take a day off this week (she suggested tomorrow, I countered with Friday) to take her to school and pick her up. I might just do it.

Her summary of her first day: "School was great!" 'Nuff said.

Lily's Third Birthday!

Lily Joy was born on 9/11/08. It's nice being essentially obligated to spend 9/11 with a joyous group of children and tolerant adults, rather than focusing on the grim realities of the warfighting engendered by the terrorist attacks that preceded Lily Joy's birth by seven years.

Which is an overly complicated way of saying I had fun at Lily's birthday party. She got a playhouse for her birthday, which is pretty awesome. Also a ballet barre (cleverly made of PVC pipes, by her clever father), and a music box from us. Lots of other stuff, too (including the unitard that she is modeling in one of the photos, below).

Speaking of photos! The photos may look a bit odd because they were taken with one of these camera-phone apps that applies an old-timey filter to each picture. I really like the effect of this particular filter, although it's not ideally suited to a child's third birthday party. However, my regular phone cam stopped working and this was my only option. Turned out OK.

Clear Lake

Teresa in the water keeping an eye on Elizabeth and Riley in a floaty.

We went to a great place called Clear Lake with the Long-Loughrans a couple of weekends ago. Great, except it was a bit trashed. The beach was rife with broken glass -- kind of a nightmare with Elizabeth and her general dislike of shoes (if not clothes in general). We also visited a part of the shoreline removed from the campground where a group had set up camp, including a pooping-place that consisted of nothing but an area four feet from the trail: no pit, no nothing but poop and toilet paper on the surface of the earth for all to see and smell. It was actually kind of depressing. Even schoolkids in a Lord of the Flies-type setting know enough to dig a pit. Who just poops on the ground and leaves it there for all to see (and, at the risk of repeating myself, smell)? Savages, I guess.

But that may not be an appropriate subject for a blog about cute kids.

The campground was nice. The weather was great. The lake was Oregon-cold, but not kill-you-in-two-minutes cold. All of the adults swam at least for a minute or two, which is about all you can ask of Oregon water.

Elizabeth and Riley played beautifully together. On the beach there was a "playhouse" made of two huge stumps overturned so that their roots interlaced to form a roof over the space between the sawed-off trunks. The kids spent most of their time at the playhouse, "working" on the house with sticks that doubled as hammers, saws, screwdrivers, and paintbrushes. It was great to watch, except for the nerve-wracking times when they were on the "roof," clambering over the spiky, dessicated roots. One slip would have resulted in a nasty poke to the ribs or worse. But the kids survived relatively unscathed.

Suzanne had a good time, too. She loved watching the big kids run around. She enjoyed Charlie the dog. Plus, she really liked the beach as she is very much into sitting on the ground and running her hands through the gravel/sand/dirt/whatever. It's a blast for her, but hard work for the parent who has to constantly be on guard against her shoveling said gravel/sand/whatever into her mouth.

By the way, as of this writing Suzanne has three teeth!

Suzanne is the one appropriately dressed in this photo. Daddy is under-dressed and cold and toughing it out.

Brian and Riley: as a baby, Riley looked exactly like Brian, minus the beard.

Notice which child is wearing shoes and which child is content to run around in her footsy-pajamas.

(Clockwise, from left) Barb, Suzanne, Teresa, Charlie, and Elizabeth, after a pretty steep mile-long hike up a trail to this logging road. Elizabeth, I believe, is pretending to be a rabbit.