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