Before Halloween, we tried Lili's Ladybug costume on her and she totally loved it. Here we are trying to get her to fly.
We picked the most lovely warm day to go to the Pumpkin Patch. Lili had a fabulous time. The Clydesdale horses kept going by to her great enjoyment, we rode the Tractor Choo-choo Train and then she got to ride a pony! Her pony's name was Buddy. We also got a mommy pumpkin, a daddy pumpkin and a little baby pumpkin.
Here's a little glimpse of some of our Halloween fun.
Liliana was a ladybug and she really, really loved her costume. She said it was "pretty". I was a "Mommy Doll" (yes, I am dealing with issues of being a stay-at-home mom now that I don't have much work), and Peter was a "Lady Larvae" or "The Creature From the Black Lagoon".
We recently took a trip down to visit friends and family in California and had a great time. Lili travelled so very well, much better than the rest of us!
We seemed to take most of our photos on the first day when we made our only stop (besides lunch in Grants Pass) to run around at The Big Tree in Prairie Creek State Park. I had forgotten just how big and impressive the redwood forest really is. Lili thought they were great and she really took to heart when we asked her to hug the Big Tree - that's my girl!
I have been remiss at posting lately and quite a few of you have been asking for videos so here you go. Not too much text, just lots of visuals.
What?!? A hailstorm in June?!? Yes, this is Central Oregon where any weather happens any time of the year. Actually, three years ago almost to the day we had a hailstorm just like this one. It was the weekend Peter and I moved to Bend and I was walking downtown with my lovely sister Heidi who flew in to help us unpack, I was wearing shorts and flip flops, and you guessed it, got caught in a tremendous hailstorm. Happy third anniversary of living in Bend.
Actually, having grown up and lived most of my life in mild climates, I find this weather totally exciting and I love it. Unfortunately all the plants got competely worked over by the hail.
We've enjoyed some great storms the past three years we have lived here, but this was the most intense and loudest yet. Between the sound of the hail on our metal roof, and the accumulated hail dumping off of the roof making "dunk" and "thud" noises as it fell, I could barely hear anything else. I couldn't do anything else but look out the windows in awe at what nature was dishing up.
In this video, check out how much water is running down the street around the car, it's almost a small creek.
You can also see what an impact the hail made as it plummeted down from the roof, it looks like little bombs fell in the dirt and the spray went for feet in all directions. The side of my house has dirt sprayed on it up about four feet. Just amazing!
my entry door. See the hail bomb
Sorry about these photos, not sure why they are not showing all the way. Just click on them to view them.
This all happened in about 30-45 minutes and then it stopped. Just like that. All the major underpasses were completely flooded, any small depression in the roadway was flooded. I still have hail piles this morning (day after) we got so much and the temperature dropped too. Still cold at about 57 degrees with humidity. Yesterday before the storm it was a good 70 degrees and lovely.
This kind of weather just makes me feel so alive!!! Got to love Summer storms!
This year for Mother's Day (my second one, still so exciting that this day is for me too!) we wanted to go on a hike and have a picnic, but last year was so torrentially cold that we decided to wait and see. Well, turns out that we had one of the warmest days we've had in a while and it was GORGEOUS. We piled our lovely little family in to our lovely little car and drove a short ways to Shevlin Park here in Bend. Shevlin has a creek running through it, hiking, biking trails all around and just all around lovely nature. We enjoyed the typical Carlsen family picnic: rotisserie chicken, grapes, cherry tomatoes, chocolate, lettuce, smoked cheddar cheese, salami, beer, prosecco and water for Lili.
The spot we stopped to picnic at had a wide area where Lili could walk around and far enough away from the creek to not be a danger. After the picnic we hiked some more, stopped again for coffee and chocolate before we headed back home for naps. Couldn't have asked for a better day!
More photos to come...
So, in Tiffany's blog she wrote about how she never wears dresses and doesn't look all that good in certain clothes. Well, the good friend that I am, I had to go back to my file of photos from the Nada Wedding for the photo of Tiffany in a very flattering dress. So here you go, Tiffany looking quite hot:
See what I mean, never would have thunk this girl dresses in men's pants...
Cheers!
Liliana has been running around in Moebees (spelling?) leather "shoes" for a while now but it hurt her delicate little feet to walk on our gravel pathway, so the time came for us to get her some real shoes. We are incredibly lucky that their are two (TWO!) families with one block of us that have girls (girls!) both six months older than Lili. Yep, lots of hand-me-downs. I put the word out that we were ready for shoes and shoes we got. Check out the vid of Lili totally loving her new red shoes:
A few weeks ago we went to the High Desert Museum, a natural history museum for our local area. They had a special exhibit on wolves and bears with a visiting pair of wolves from a reserve in Colorado. My mom is totally wild about wolves so she went to the talk with the wolves and we ran around the museum.
Liliana loved loved loved the Lynx that was asleep but open an eye and stretched for us. She stood transfixed and was so excited to see a big kitty:
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