Suprise party for Kris

Its always a fun time at the Spencers, but when your celebrating a birthday its even better. We ate YUMMY food prepared by the very beautiful and very pregnant Jen (who since has given birth to a handsome baby boy!), visited with great friends, played Wii (well, the kids played...Jake and Kris kept stealing the remotes from them and upsetting them), and had many laughs as always. Happy Birthday Kris! (ok...so this post is way over due and this was weeks ago and we already wished him happy birthday that night...but I have to be animated for the blog so it looks like Im not really months behind in blogging! hehe)

Kris stealing the remote from the kids playing wii.

Kris has a drum set in this really cool room in their basement. The room is concrete and has a jail door on it, its perfect for locking the kids in for a time out..totally kidding! But it IS perfect for the drum set. This time our boys really got into playing them, and we're now thinking of signing them back up into music classes...this time for instruments, not the baby-mommy sing time ones we did when they were younger.

I AM your father!

Jake taking a little rest on Kory...what goofs, and yes Kory if you read this you can steal the picture for your creations, I know you want to.

The kids getting the lightsabers ready for Wii. Madok, in the tan clothes, is our friend Kory and Jens oldest, he is absolutley hands down the funniest kid Ive ever met.

Easter weekend

Every Easter we head to the beach for a full weekend of Easter relaxation with just us and the boys. Its become one of my favorite family traditions that we've started. This year due to Jakes work schedule, we had to make it a shorter weekend. We figured with it being a shorter weekend than were used to taking for Easter, we'd choose a new location for our stay. This year we went to Garibaldi. I was craving some squeeky cheese from the Tillamook Factory, so Garibaldi was the town we chose to stay at. I realized when we got there, that I had never been to that little town before. It was a nice & relaxing, yet quick weekend. I was thankful for the bad weather and time crunch though, because I didnt realize there was no beach to play on there...and had we had more time and good weather Id have felt really guilty for taking my kids to the beach and not letting them go out ON the beach.
We arrived to our hotel and had dinner at a Pirate Resturaunt...honestly I cant remember the name, just that it was Pirate something or other. A little spendy and really smelly (guess thats expected at the beach hu?), but the food was pretty good. We went back to our hotel and headed straight for the pool for some water time fun. Its so fun to watch the boys in the water these days. Before our Hawaii trip this winter the boys were sort of timid in the pool, now they are crazy little fish. Once we finished up at the pool, we headed to our room to dye easter eggs. Then it was to bed so that the Easter Bunny could find us and hopefully leave some suprises. This trip was a little hard on the Easter Bunny. Typically we try to stay in places that have full apartment type stays (living room, kitchen, bedroom, etc..our fav is Gearhart by the Sea) so its easy to have him visit and set up things in the living area while the boys are in the bedroom, but this trip we stayed in your typical studio hotel room. Because of this, the Easter Bunny couldnt make an appearance until the boys were completley asleep (I think he showed up in our room close to 2am when the boys finally fell asleep, whew!)...and even at that, he had to run a few times as little boys stirred in bed. Thankfully he was able to hide some eggs (40+ of them) around our room (and on the boys heads), set up their basket suprises and leave before morning uncaught. The boys woke to many fun suprises and were very happy little boys. Their baskets were full to the brim with toys and treats. Eli's special suprise was the next 10 books in his Magic Treehouse Series books. Zach got the Chipmunk Squeekuel movie and CD...which we rocked out to on our drive home. On our way home, we stopped and had ice cream and cheese at the Tillamook Cheese Factory and came home with lots of yummy cheese for the fridge. It may have been a short trip, but it was another amazing family Easter weekend at the beach for the Waibels.

Eli showing off his almost empty ice cream bowl at the Tillamook Cheese Factory.

mmmmm Zach enjoying his ice cream

The boys watching the workers make cheese. Jake and I both agreed that we'd go completley nutts if we had to work that job, could you imagine doing the same thing over and over and over...makes me crazy to think about it. My hat goes off to those cheesemakers, they are amazing at what they do!

Zachy and the cows...awwww

Eli and the cows....ahhhhhh what a goof.

Silly boys!

Checking out the boat in front of the Factory.

Showing off their loot from the Easter bunny...here they are showing their Snuggables (or Snuggamoo as Zach calls his)

Zach has a slight addiction to toy cars.

Eli and some of his Magic Treehouse books.

Eggs!

Silly Easter bunny, hiding eggs on the sleeping children...

showing off their dyed eggs

will he ever take a serious picture for me ever ever EVER again in his life? I swear, Im starting to believe all the comments that I ruined him by taking too many pictures of him when he was little.

Painting eggs...

We let the boys go in the sauna with Jake breifly to see how it worked. They were in amazement, or maybe fear, that Daddy was dumping water on electrical rocks. They both came out because it was too hot and hurt their eyes.

Zach in the pool, he just loves his snorkel gear from Hawaii....I love hearing him talk through the tube.

Eli having fun in the water.

This one freaks me out, so I had to share. Eli was moving his head so fast that his face is gone. Sort of reminds me of poltergeist.

That about wraps up our fabulous Easter weekend, hope all of you had a great weekend as well!

random fun

Over Spring Break I tried to come up with lots of fun things for the boys every day. We've been really busy latley, so I wanted to the week to be nothing but fun. Aside from the pink eye Eli came down with half way through the week that cancelled the rest of our outings, we still had a fun week with no schedules to follow for a change.

The boys had a great time playing with the papier mache space helmets we made on our first days of Spring Break. Here they are in their space shuttle crashing....see how Zach is reaching to save Eli from falling out of the shuttle? Crazy kids.

Zach's helmet. Look at those handsome blue eyes!

...and of course Eli and his handsome greens in his helmet.

The boys posing in their helmets for the camera.

We spent a day at Omsi...and learned lots about dinosaurs. We got to watch a Omnimax movie on them, the boys loved it.

Im really confused as to why I didnt take any pictures of Eli on this morning, but this is St Patricks Day. The kids reminded me for days to clean all their green clothing, including their green halloween frankenstein socks. So to make the day even more green, I cooked green eggs and green sausage.

Zach was convinced he was going to turn green and ran to the bathroom every few seconds just to make sure he hadnt.

What a beautiful rainbow!

Zach is like an elephant, once he has his mind set on something he wont ever let you forget. About a month into preschool this year he decided when it was letter S day that he would bring strawberries for snack to share with his friends. Weekly he'd ask me if we were almost to S day. It was beginning to wear on me, so I was so thankful when S day arrived! We spent the afternoon covering those yummy "S"trawberries in chocolate.

Water time in Hawaii

Yes it was 80-85 degrees on just about every day we were in Hawaii, but that didnt keep us from the hot tub!

After our snorkel trips I let the boys play in the pool with the camera to finish off the film. I was a little dissapointed in the quality of some of the pictures, but what more can you expect from a disposable? The pictures dont give the snorkeling much justice, real life was way more exciting.

Here is a baby whale playing around, just getting ready to jump up out of the water and show off for us.

Here is Zach after we made him snorkel in the ocean. He said he didnt want to do it, but we made him anyways. He clung to us and almost drown Mommy a few times, but had a few good moments he'll never forget and he'll thank us someday for making him get in. A few times I fibbed to him and said we'd swim back to the boat if he just looked at the fishies. So he did, and got very excited to see them and then quickly remembered he was in the ocean and tried to drown me again. I was able to fib a few times to get him to see more, but eventually had to quit fibbing and take him back to the boat. He was a little mad at us for a while, but then got to feed the fish and got happy again. Isnt he adorable in his little wet suit? (that we returned to the rental and got our money back because Hawaii water is NOT cold)

Eli snorkeling in the ocean.

Eli (and some random guy) swimming along in the ocean with the sea life.

This picture is the only one I got of Zach in the ocean on our snorkel trip. (Its of Jake and Zachs legs, you can see that Jake is holding him)

Before this trip I was deathly afraid of the ocean and wasnt sure that Jake could get me out there to snorkel. After talking myself down from a few panic attacks as fish got close, I quickly realized that the oceans all over the world are not all like they are here in Oregon. Hawaii is so calm and warm (not the cold unpredictable monster we have here), I quickly fell in love with the ocean there and those who know me well would have been impressed not only that I chased fish to capture them in pictures...but also that I let my kids do it too without hovering them. I sat on the beach and watched them laugh till they were out of breath as the ocean swept them 10 feet out and flung them back up on the shore. They had so much fun, and I didnt freak once. Gosh forbid they wash out 4 more feet and end up in calm waters where they could snorkel with some of the most beautiful fish Id ever seen. Hawaii makes me a little less of a helicopter parent, I enjoyed that more than I can ever put into words. I love Hawaii, I want to live there.