Business at the Blaines

My indoor garden this year.  Nate built this grow light for me, and it's working really well!

Ben and Deven are soccer super stars this spring!  Both boys scored two goals in their games on Saturday.

The wildflowers in California were gorgeous!

Our kayak adventure on Clearlake

We drove over to Fort Bragg and enjoyed a walk on the beach.

If you can't read that sign up there it says "LumberJacks, where the big boys eat."  I thought it was funny!

All ready to hunt for eggs at Grandma's and Granddad's house.

What are you finding Aiden?

Deven counting his eggs.

A fun game of Phase 10 with the kids, Grandma being one of them.

Watching over the flock.

Our six new friends.  Now we have to build the coop!

The kids playing "Just Dance Kids" on the Wii. I played with them, and it was fun. Although it would be just as entertaining to watch the dancers.

I am trying to upload videos of the kids playing their piano songs, but am not having luck.  I'll try one more time, but I might have to email them to you Mom!

Spring!

Hello family! We had a fantastic visit from Mom and Dad the weekend before last and are beginning to enjoy the spring sunshine that they brought up with them.Signs of spring are all around us and we are hoping you snow bound or season-less folk are enjoying this time of year as much as us Portlanders.

One part of spring that has been especially great this year is observing all the changes that are taking place at our new house and neighborhood. Some of work from last year is beginning to pay off as well. The side of the house is abloom with tulips and daffodils and the necta-plum we planted in the front had a few blooms on top. Hopefully we will get some fruit.

The afore mentioned necta-plum blooms.

In between our garden beds we planted a half-wine barrel full of herbs.

Back to the visit last week: Here is Mom posing for a photo for my phone.

We didn't let them stand around for long. Before we let them enjoy Portland we had them do some serious work. We chopped down the tree in front of our house. It was a noble aged tree. Our octotarrian neighbor mentioned how it had been there for as long as she had been next door, some forty years or so, right Alisa? We also put together and stained some adirondack chairs and table we found at home depot for the front porch.

After all the work they insisted on taking a bit of a nap. I still had a long list of chores for them to do, but I suppose they earned a few winks. 

We had some great meals and great times! Capping off their visit, we went to a funky little Portland restaurant called "Ned Lud." Portland's version of fine dining. It was a fantastic meal! 

While there I spotted a pretty famous dude, Harry Shearer, the "it goes to 11" guy from Spinal Tap for those that are familiar. Behind that incredibly goofy awkward smile is him. I had Alisa take this snap-shot to, hopefully unobtrusively, document the spotting. 

Mom bought us and them matching gerber daisy's. We are going to have a plant-off to see who can out garden whom. I think she already gets bonus points for "smuggling" hers across the border. OK, it turned out they didn't care about plants.
 
Hope you are all doing great!

Rilan, Rilan, Rilan!!!

supposed to be a video of Rilan running his electric car Thain bought him, but so far

it hasn't uploaded, not sure it will work!

                               Rilan having bath time fun aka destroying whatever he can, gotta

love that smile though!

 Out on a walk on a nice day!  

 In his electric car, he can seriously drive it and steer it around kitchen corners and everything, the video is supposed to show that but I don't think it will download right on here don't know why!   loves all his big cars though....our living room looks like a toddler

parking garage!!!  

With Amber on his favorite car the one Grandad and Grandma got him for Christmas!

This and That from Dad and Mom!

This is out of order as I accidentally deleted it! It's the real (there are two) golden spike from the joining of the Union Railroad's easterly and westerly divisions in Promontory, Utah. It was of special interest to me as the Blaines and Jill took Granny and me there a few years ago and we got to see 'the' spot that joined the two. This spike is in the Railroad Museum in Sacramento and automatically goes down into a vault every evening at 5:00 pm when the museum closes and comes back up at 10:00 am when it reopens.
Bronco, Nate, Jill, Thain, and Rilan prepare for laser tag at Emily's 10th birthday celebration in January! They did great!
Emily is attempting to control the ball in one of her great gifts.
Deven built this fire station almost all by himself from the many pieces in one of his Christmas gifts.
Nate, Ben, Deven, Emily, Jen and Bronco in a family picture in front of the font after Benjamin's baptism.
Colby wearing his letter jacket - the Bobcats were the divisional champions this year, and Colby was key as their offensive guard!
I had the honor of sewing on his letter!
This is one of the aftermaths of our beautiful snowstorm a month ago. Two huge oaks tumbled and crashed. Unfortunately they damaged some fruit trees and Dad's electric fence around the bee hives. He spend many cold hours repairing that fence because we were leaving the next day for our Road Scholar "Trains across the Sierra" trip and wanted no bears dining while we were gone.
While touring the capitol in Sacramento we passed all the countys' displays. This one for San Mateo County has a picture of the Pulgas Water Temple near the center, which happens to be where Dad proposed to me!
A picture of California's Governor's office

Dad and I loved the railroad museum with all the different cars and engines - a few we walked through were a dining car with samples of china from the different lines, a Pullman (sleeper), a mailcar, etc. Upstairs are wooden trains and tracks for kids to play with, and this working display of different sizes of Lionel trains. A Lionel electric train was big in the lives of my brothers growing up - for years they and our dad had one going around our Christmas trees!
Dad and I had a yummy meal at Fats Restaurant in Old Town after our afternoon at the museum .

On our Amtrack Zephyr trip across the Sierras we saw oodles of snow and stately trees, beautiful clouds, traveling along the Truckee River and Interstate 80 in parts, and went through many tunnels, one several miles long.
Yesterday Brianna's school's choir put on a wonderful program. This is a scene from their segment on Star Wars.

Happy Birthday Jeremy!!

Just wanted to wish you a very Happy Birthday Jeremy!!  We hope you have a wonderful day!

Happy Birthday Bronco!

 Bronco's fishy cake.  I got the idea from the Family Fun Magazine Mom!

 Thanks for the super cute monkey Jeremy and Kathryn.  He loved it!

 Checking out his reflection in the game cube from Grandma and Granddad, thanks Mom and Dad!

 Bronco's cute puppy from Aunt Jill.  So fun to watch him do a flip!  Great idea Jill!

 This is my favorite picture, he's trying so hard to blow out his candle.  He hated getting his hands all sticky in the frosting.  I gave him a spoon.  He liked that a lot better. I cut everyone pieces from the big cake before he got to work on it.  As you can see in the video, he did really good at making a mess of it!

 I've put in a little video of him feeding himself with a spoon for the first time.  

When should we teach him how to chew with his mouth closed?

It's a Girl!!!

Just had an ultrasound today and  the tech said it was deffinetly a little girl!  Yeay.  Also everything looked and measured normal and healthy!!    Which is always wonderful to hear.   None of the pics turned out that good so I won't blog them but I wanted to share the exciting news!    Love to all.  The Anderson's!