April

Busy building her "bug house"

What bug wouldn't want to live in this paradise? :)

Alsea Falls

Serious marshmallow roasters

Oops

The kids have colds so dress up to the rescue!

We've had some beautiful weather this month!  We've enjoyed campfires in the back yard, walks in the forest, a trip to Alsea falls, and lots of time in the garden prepping for a hopefully abundant year.  Our chickens finally started laying eggs again too!  They have been slacking since November, so it's been nice to have fresh eggs.  Our raspberries look amazing this year.  We've never had a good crop because they are on the edge of the garden and don't get watered well and so we are going to add drip irrigation to hopefully address that issue this year.  I have twice as many strawberry plants this year too, so if the birds will leave them alone we may actually be able to get some in the freezer.  It's also looking like it will be a bumper crop year for our Asian pears and grapes. 

My Sierra could spend every waking minute outside.  She's just like me in that aspect.  She keeps herself busy building bug habitats, forts, helping in the garden, looking for snakes and bugs, and any other possible thing you can do outside.  Jaxon enjoys some time outside but is still at the age of needing constant supervision, so I don't let him go off to do his own thing.  Even right at my side he has managed to drink out of a mud puddle like a dog (he was quite a bit younger when that happened), pick a daffodil and take a bite of the stalk saying "celery", pick up a pile of dog poop explaining that he'd found some cool rocks, and plenty of other things that have me yelling "stop" but never quite in time.  Sigh.

We're getting towards the end of the school year.  Sierra's doing great in reading and math.  The only real homework she has is about 10 to 15 minutes of reading a night and a little worksheet that goes along with the book she's read.  It's always seems really simple to her and yet she always kind of dreads it.  But she loves to have me read chapter books to her.  She's really into a series right now called Animal Ark.  It's about a little girl whose mom and dad are both vets.  It's the same kind of books that I loved when I was little.  She also loves to do math and has me write up addition and subtraction problems that involve borrowing.  They haven't touched much on borrowing yet in school, so we've worked on it at home and she loves doing more complex problems.  She is a child that expects to get things right away though, and if she gets confused she gets very upset and just wants to quit.  We are working on getting past the frustration and realizing that it takes time to learn new things.  While there are some things she has a natural knack for, there are others that take much more practice.  And she thinks that everything should just be natural and easy. 

Jaxon also benefits from her math practice.  She'll write up papers for him with simple problems and have him solve them.  He really does learn from it and she feels pretty awesome when she's taught him something.  We are still working on sounding out simple words with him.  I haven't pushed reading too hard because there are a million other things to work on and lots of time to learn to read.  I'm sure he could be much father along if I pushed it.  But to be honest, he's also busy being a four year old boy.  He likes to make a mess, play with his trucks, and play with his dog.  Pretty soon he will start school and that will occupy many years of his life, so play is pretty important in my book.  While he loves to sit and listen to me read, practice math, and sound out words, I never push it.  Right now I would rather he spend time outside and get the chance to be a little boy (although I wish it didn't involve drinking Giardia water and playing with dog poo). That's just life with a boy I guess :)

March

Disneyland, here we come!

In awe of the Tiki Room show

Jaxon loves rides!  Sierra will only go on rides that don't go fast and don't leave the ground.

Home.  Ahhhhh.

Spring Break day trip to the coast.

Jesse wrote Jaxon's name, so he proceeded to write DADDE

Jaxon got to destroy the castle before we left.

Sierra was beyond thrilled to find a whole sand dollar.  It was the highlight of her whole spring break!

Ready for some serious Easter Egg hunting

Easter bunny and face paint

Sweet lil pup

You know how you plan for a trip for months and months and hope and pray that everyone stays safe and healthy before the trip arrives?  Does that ever really happen for anyone?  It sure didn't happen that way for us.  First off, both of the kids caught really bad colds before we left.  Sierra caught it first and was at least starting to feel better by the time we left but Jaxon was in the deep dark trenches of an ugly virus.  The worst we've had in a while, go figure.  He hardly ever gets coughs but ended up with a horrid one.  And then the night before we were supposed to leave Jesse ended up with severe stomach pain and started vomiting.  With his history of stomach ailments we went to the ER and ended up staying there until 4am.  Apparently he has esophageal and stomach ulcers and stones in his gallbladder.  Before they released him, they told him that he has to eat less fats and cut out high acid foods (no more daily burgers for lunch or adding hot sauces to everything) and has to start taking some hard core antacids.  Hopefully with a diet change and the meds he will be able to avoid having his gallbladder removed.  After giving him his meds, they sent us on our way.  We went home and slept for a few hours (thankfully my parents came and took the kiddos to their house for the night when we headed to the ER) and then got up the next morning to head on our way to Disneyland.  Luckily our flight was out of Eugene and not until 3 pm or I'm not sure we would've been able to make it after being up all night.

The flight went pretty well considering how sick Jaxon was.  He coughed quite a bit and dug at his ears on the landing, but handled it very well.  Getting to our hotel was a process.  It was an hour drive from LAX and we had to find a shuttle service that made it all the way to the hotel.  After paying about $200 for a one way ride for all of us, we were headed on our way.  By the time we got to the hotel we were pretty beat but the ladies at the front desk were wonderful.  They gave the kids little goodie bags, gave us free wifi (it should have been $10 a day!), and included my parents on the free shuttle that just our room was supposed to get.  They also moved us around so that we could have adjoining rooms.  It was super low season, so the hotel was not full at all, but we really appreciated the super customer service (we stayed at the Sheraton Garden Grove).  After checking in we headed to our rooms and went to bed.  Jaxon had a horrid time breathing because he was so sick and coughed and gasped and wheezed all night long.  Jesse and I hardly slept but Sierra did fine.  We got up slowly the next morning and eventually made our way to Disney.

It was almost noon by the time we made it to the park so we had to find lunch right away.  Then we wandered around the park a bit.  We met Jasmin, Genie, and Aladdin, watched a show in the Tiki Room, and did some more wandering.  We were all pretty tired to start with and the kids were done with the park by about 2pm.  Sierra's not really into rides anyway and the fact that you have to wait to ride the rides (wait times were 20 to 30 mins), wait to get signatures, wait for food, wait, wait, wait, was not really impressive to the kids.  Instead of forcing them to stay, we headed back to the hotel.  Sierra enjoyed some time in the pool while I tried to get Jaxon to take a nap, but again, the poor kid couldn't breathe and just hacked for a good 30 minutes straight and so I gave up.  We had dinner at the resort and had planned to go back but the kids were just too pooped.  Jesse and I ended up going back to the park while the kids stayed with my parents and went to bed.  We went on 2 rides and were pooped ourselves and made it back to the hotel by 9:30.  We party pretty hard :)  Sierra slept well but Jaxon had another horrid night.  I think the air conditioning made it even harder for him to breathe and he ended up wheezing the whole night.  I swore he was not getting enough oxygen, but somehow he managed so sleep.

Day 2 we decided to head to California Adventure instead of Disneyland.  And we were very glad we did.  We got to see a 3D preview of the movie Zootopia and it was incredible.  It was in a theater that splashed water on you, blew air in your face, and your seat moved along with the preview.  Plus it was 3D.  It was so fun!  We had to plug Jaxon's ears the whole time because it was very loud, but he really enjoyed it.  We went to CarsLand and rode a few rides but again the kids just didn't make it much past 2.  We went back to the hotel and hung out for a bit had dinner and then Jesse, Dad, Sierra and I headed back to the park while mom stayed behind with Jaxon.  We had an enjoyable evening and didn't get back until about 10.  Mostly Sierra enjoyed shopping at all of the stores.  She had about $70 saved up for the trip and was so thrifty and actually came home with money.  That's my girl!  Jaxon slept a little better the last night as we kept the air conditioning turned down.  But boy are we ready for our own beds!

The final day we had breakfast at the hotel, shopped at Target, and headed back to the airport.  Both of the kids slept most of the way home on the plane.  Unfortunately Jaxon would only sleep if I held him, and by the end of the plane ride my back was in a spasm it hurt so bad.  But he slept until we landed and dug at his ears again but didn't fuss.  Sierra woke up right as we started decent and did have trouble with her ears.  She ended up kind of an emotional mess.  We got our things and got right out to the car (LOVE flying Eugene airport) and discovered our battery was dead because one of the doors didn't get shut all of the way.  Luckily we caught mom and dad before they left and there was an empty parking spot kitty corner to us so they could jump us.  Goodness.  We made it home, ate dinner, and collapsed into our beds.  Jaxon slept all night without any wheezing or snoring or coughing.

We had a great time despite the setbacks but if I had to choose a time to go, I still think I would've waited until Jaxon was at least 8 or so.  That way the waiting wouldn't be quite as hard, they could handle staying up later, and enjoy the parks more.  As it is, most of their fond memories seem to include the hotel :)  It would have been way easier to stay at a hotel closer to home!  But it was a fun experience and the fact that the parks and hotel were free because of the contest I won were obviously amazing, and the whole reason we made the trip.

For the rest of March we actually stayed healthy and made a day trip to the coast for spring break, enjoyed Easter, and spoke fondly of our trip to others.  Jaxon still asks daily when we are going to go back to the big hotel with the S on it.  And Sierra had fun bringing some of her Disney finds to show and tell at school.  But man, there is no place like home.