Newport

We love the coast. It was another beautiful day in Newport, the weather couldn't have been better for our trip to the coast. We went to the lighthouse, the Chowder Bowl, the beach, and back to the tide pools when the tide was low.

Hailee looking at the view from the light house.

Todd and Hailee at the beach . Hailee was much happier on dad's shoulders than getting sand in her shoes walking on the beach.

Light house. Hailee was very upset at the "white house" because she was not tall enough to walk up the stairs. She needs to be 42-inches to go inside. She insisted that she was "taller" but we explained that she needed to grow a few more inches.

From the light house just out from the tide pool you could see harbor seals. They were kind of far away, but thanks to dads telephoto lens they look quite close.

The tide pools at low tide. I'm not sure what all these little things are called, but they were very cool to look at.

Hailee enjoyed the tide pools.

We saw all kinds of things there like this starfish.

Silver Creek Falls

The next day (7/27/07) we were a little more adventurous and decided to go on a longer hike. At Sliver Creek falls they have a hike with 10 waterfalls. It was so beautiful. We saw 8 of the 10 falls and had a great time.

Fall #1 (South Falls). The first two falls were very impressive.

Hailee enjoyed being spoiled by her grandparents and her aunts this weekend. We took her stroller on the trail and it worked for most of the time. There were steps and some rough spots that she would rather ride on "papa's" shoulders.

Nicole, Mom, Hailee and Dad at the first waterfall.

Nicole, Deneille, Hailee, Emily, Mom and Dad at the second waterfall.

Mom, Emily, Nicole, Denille, Dad, and Hailee along the trail. It is so nice hiking in Oregon because there are so many trees you are never in the sun. Much different than hiking in Southern Utah.

The first two waterfalls the trail actually goes behind the waterfall. It was fun to walk behind the waterfall. Here is Emily and Hailee. Hailee was trying to feel the water.

Hailee and I resting at one of the waterfalls along the trail. I think it was the 4th one we saw.

Aunt Deneille taking a turn pushing the stroller. The trail was nicely maintained so I was very happy to we brought along Hailee's stroller.

Waterfall #3

Waterfall #4 I think. The later waterfalls didn't have as much water coming off of them, they rely more on the spring run-off and winter rains to be really pretty.

Alsea Falls

Thursday (7/26/07) I took my parents up to Alsea falls. It was beautiful. It was mine and Hailee's first time there as well. All was going well until Hailee decided she needed to go to the bathroom (despite being asked 10 minutes before when were in the parking lot and everyone else was going to the bathroom). I was on my way taking her to the bathroom and was trying to be very careful with Hailee when I slipped and fell. I ended up being all muddy with a bruise on my thigh about 5" x 5". Hailee was just fine, just a little muddy. My only thought as I was falling was making sure she didn't get hurt.

I think having to take off her beautiful dress because of the mud was the most upsetting to her. Here are Hailee and I all muddy.

After we got home and got cleaned up we decided to pick blackberries. It is still so amazing to me that we have blackberries just growing like weeds every where. We picked some outside our apartment and in no time at all we had two little buckets full. It was so much fun. We enjoyed blackberries the rest of the weekend.

Hailee learned how to pick blackberries. At first she just picked all of them (even green ones) but then she learned you just pick the ripe ones.

Helping Grandpa pick blackberries.

What a good little helper.

Soccer Class

In Hailee's soccer class they have started doing 1/2 with the parents there and the other 1/2 with the parents just watching. It's fun to see Hailee out there on her own playing games and listening to what coach Erin tells her to do. These pictures aren't the best, but they are all I could get. The lighting isn't very good there. She is in a class with 4 boys and of course she insists on wearing a dress to every class.

Harry Potter

It has been a while since I posted and I'm blaming Harry Potter, but it's not totally his fault. We've just had a busy week and been enjoying being a little lazy.

So one happy thing I discovered for my husband was that we can watch TV in the club house. Hooray! Todd can watch soccer again. But what I didn't know was how this was going to affect me as well. All of the sudden he is excited to do laundry with me. I know seems like an unlikely combination, but we also discovered we can watch TV in the club house if it's not reserved and we're the first ones there. Saturday night we did a load of laundry and watch David Beckhams debut with the LA Galaxy. Chelsea won and Beckham only played the last few minutes, but it was a lot of fun. I can't believe how crazy everyone is for Beckham, it looks like he will be good for US Soccer. I'm just excited, I enjoy watching soccer and I get help doing the laundry. What could be better than that.

This past weekend we were also very boring. We didn't stay up late and pick up our copy of Harry Potter at midnight. We knew Hailee would probably not enjoy staying up so late and it's no fun to go by yourself, so we just waited until Saturday to go pick ours up at Costco. The last couple of Harry Potter books Todd and I read them together. It is so much fun, and Hailee seemed to enjoy it too. That way we can discuss it together as we go along. It is much more fun in my opinion. We finished reading Monday night. I don't want to spoil anything, but I have to say that J.K. Rowling did an amazing job. I was a little nervous at the end of book 6. I had no idea how she was going to be able to get everything in that she needed to. But she did a great job and the whole series is amazing. I'm sure it will be books we read often to our children.

Hailee has had a good week. With all the reading that has been going on in our house she has become even more interested in books (which I didn't think was humanly possible). Hailee loves to read. If we are just home she wants to be reading. But now she goes off and reads more and more on her own. It's something she has been starting recently. She is also starting to sound out words. Her other favorite thing to do is play her computer game, oftentimes we hear her singing the songs from it "The big hit went into the mitt can you hear short 'i' in it." or "Ed the elephant loves red eggs 'e' 'e'" It's always so cute to hear.

The other fun thing that happened was on Friday we went and spent the day with Susan and Debbie. We went to Salem and rode on their carousel and had a good day. Since we missed Hailee's soccer class on Friday we got to make it up Saturday so Todd got to come. They had different teachers so it took Hailee a minute to warm up to the new teachers, but after that she has a great time. I am glad that Todd got to see in person how much she really enjoys soccer. She has so much fun with all the little games they play.

Curious George

I love the look of pure happiness you sometimes find on a child's face. Since we don’t have TV this summer Hailee has been missing her favorite little monkey from PBS. Saturday we found the Curious George movie at redbox (yes Corvallis finally got a redbox). Yesterday afternoon we watched it for the first time. She LOVED it, I can’t believe we haven’t watched it before. It was such a good movie. I wish I would have taken a picture of the look on her face during the entire movie. It was a look of pure happiness. It was a movie the whole family enjoyed (I love it when we find that). Todd is a Jack Johnson fan so he downloaded the soundtrack from iTunes. It's cute to see Hailee rock out to Jack Johnson. I love making my child happy.

Unfortunately, it didn't last long. Hailee has come down with a cold so after the movie I had to try and convince her that the medicine I was trying to give her wasn't poison and it was actually going to help her. Today after a good rest last night she has been a much happier sick child. The good news about her illness is she is learning to use a tissue when she needs to sneeze. She jumps up and grabs a tissue then sneezes into it. Sometimes she misses the first sneeze, but for sure gets the second and is rapidly improving. Her poor little nose is all red from her sneezing. A few minutes ago she came and climbed into my lap and fell asleep. There is nothing sweeter than that. Being a mom is really such a wonderful thing, even with the grumpy nights I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

The other good news for the day is the clubhouse at our apartment has cable TV. I went and talked to our managers to see if we could reserve it to watch a soccer game tomorrow (Chelsea vs. South Korea). Being from England and a huge “football” fan our manager waived the fee and said we could watch the game and any other soccer games we wanted. Todd is in heaven. The only thing we have missed not having TV is PBS for Hailee and sports for Todd. Otherwise it’s been really a nice summer without TV.

Halfway mark...how sad

I can't believe we are halfway through our internship. It makes me so sad. It's strange to think that we only have 6 more weekends to discover Oregon. It has been so much fun, and we are going to be so sad to go home. Excited to start a new semester and get back together with good friends, but very sad to say goodbye to our experience here. We have made so many good friends and have had a great time in Oregon.

Yesterday was the first day it really felt like summer, and the first day it really felt good to get into the pool. We've had temperatures in the upper 60's to the upper 80's most of the summer, and yesterday we jumped to 100. Today we are back down to the upper 80's and have a nice cloud cover and cool breeze so our house has cooled down nicely (we don't have air conditioning and yesterday was the only day that it's been a problem). Taking full advantage of the heat we went to the pool in our complex. It was so great. I think I could swim all day if the weather is warm enough. Being from St. George I don't think there is anything better than having it really hot and jumping into a cold swimming pool.

Tomorrow we have a work BBQ with Todd's finance team that we are looking forward to. This will be my first chance to meet with the people Todd's works closest with. We have had other activities, but they have been with the Young Employees Network or the Interns group.

Todd has been busy with work and loving all the opportunities of networking he has had there. Hewlett-Packard has been such a great experience and we would love to come back. At first I wasn't sure about Oregon. I really like living in a big city. Corvallis at 50,000 people definitely isn't big, but I have fallen in love with the area. Any place without sales tax and where I don't have to pump my own gas has to be a great place. We will have to see how things go, we would love to come back.

I am not the sun

G O A L !!

Hailee has loved going to soccer class. Here is a video of her scoring a goal before class starts.

Happy 4th of July

Susan Wollander called and invited us to have a picnic at Mary's Peak (the tallest mountain around Corvallis). On a clear day you can see all the way to the coast. She surprised us again when she brought a new 4th of July dress she had just made for Hailee. Hailee was in heaven to have another new dress and we've decided that Susan loves to spoil Hailee. You can't see in the pictures very well but it had red, white, and blue stars on it. Hailee loved it so much she had to sleep in it when she went to bed at night. It was such a beautiful day and we had such a nice picnic with Susan, Debbie, Mark and Amanda. After our picnic we walked to the top of Mary's Peak, it was just about a mile to the very top. We all had a great time. On the hike back Hailee just started singing Old McDonald had a farm. I had to capture it on video. Below is only a small portion of her song. She went through all the animals.

A few more pictures

This picture just cracked me up. She didn't want to get her picture taken so she just turned around and refused to look at the camera. If you look close you can see her little arms folded in annoyance at her parents for wanting to take her picture.

Hailee happy at the top of the mountain running around. She had plenty of energy because Todd carried her most of the way up. Oh to be three again!

Old McDonald had a Farm