When she woke up, the house had been decorated in the night and there was a present for her to open on the table.

It is a barn like the one she loves to play with at her friend’s house…

We decorated the house like it was underwater. All of the ballons had a piece of candy, clips or another small item. The kids got to go around and pop the “bubbles” and get treats out of them. It was Sophie’s idea as she still might be traumatized by the pinata incident of her third birthday. Ballons are much easier to open, provide a more appropriate amount of candy and are very, very loud.

Mommy made this wonderful aquarium cake, just as Lillie requested…

Another game we played at the party is fishing paper-cliped fish with a magnetic fishing pole. The fish each had a small sheet of stickers for the girls. Lillie’s next-door friend, Lyla, came over to play and celebrate with us. And Coco wanted to catch the string and the fish in the tray.

Lillie got some wonderful gifts, including this one, a really china tea set from GranMolly and Gromper. She loved each one of her presents and handled all of the excitement very well.

Happy Birthday, Lillian. We love you so much!!!

On previous trips to the beach it has always been a little bit cold, and Sophie has never really gotten into playing in the waves. This trip was warm enough and the waves were calm enough that we had a great time running in and out of the water. We must have spent an hour or more just chasing the waves.

After we got tired of the beach we hiked up to the old light-house. It may not look like much, but it was actually pretty neat on the inside and we got to take a tour of it and go up into the tower.

After the light-house we drove back down to Florence where we stopped on the waterfront for a bowl of clam chowder before driving home. It was a great day.

Veronica and Becky:

The girls were happy to see their aunt. Lillie took a little while to warm up, but ended up thinking that Veronica is pretty okay. The necklaces they have on were gifts from Veronica and Efrain:

Our family got to stay out in the motor home, which Sophie and Lillie thought was just the coolest thing ever. They spent all their time playing out there, but I didn’t get many good pictures of them. Here’s a picture of Sophie hanging off the top bunk

On Saturday we drove out past Beaverton (no small drive from Vancouver) to see Nick compete in a tractor pull. Sadly, I didn’t get any pictures of Nick on the shiny purple “Dirtinator”, but we had a good time watching him compete.

We also finally got some good pictures of the family. Here’s Mima with her girls

And with Becky and Sophie (Lillie refused to be in the picture):

and finally, a decent picture of my family:

The cats are 14 weeks old now and are much bigger than when most of these pictures were taken. They spend a lot of their time sleeping — as cats are wont to do — but they need the sleep because the girls play with them a _lot_.

Coco was not as weaned as we’d been lead to believe when we adopted him, but Sophie didn’t mind, she liked bottle feeding him. He clearly didn’t suffer from missing his momma, he’s on his way to being a very big, sleek cat.

Both the cats are tolerant of being treated like babies. They actually seem to like sleeping in cribs and being carried. It is remarkable really, I think some dolls would object to some of the treatment they get….

We started at the cabin where the girls found lots of wild salmon berries to eat. I wasn’t sure they’d like them, as I’ve always looked at salmon berries are something of an acquired taste, but both the girls took to them immediately and had fun foraging for them. This seems to be a good year for salmon berries so there were lots to find

The cabin is getting a bit overgrown since we don’t get there very much these days. This is the main trail, which usually doesn’t have anything growing in it.

The girls had helped me pack a picnic the night before and we had a good lunch on the front deck. The mosquitos looked fierce, but didn’t seem to bite us and the girls didn’t even seem to notice them.

Lillie found navigating the tall grass and blackberries to be hard, but Sophie had a lot of fun exploring and really wanted Lillie to go off on an expedition with her. Lillie wasn’t having any of it though, so we went through the meadow and down to the creek, but didn’t ever get very far from the Cabin.

After the cabin we headed to the beach (the South jetty, near Florence) for the rest of the afternoon. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the central Oregon coast, it is sparsely populated and even on a day in June we were able to have a beach to ourselves. Sophie loved running down the dunes, then we set up on the beach and built a sand castle

Our sand castle (not quite finished):

Eventually the girls got tired of the sand (and the cold wind that was blowing) so we headed in to Florence to explore the harbor and get some clam chowder at Mo’s.

It was a wonderful day for me and I feel lucky to have such fun girls to play with.

Sweet Dee is the gray one and is a girl, and  Coco is the black and white one and is a boy. They were born May 2nd, so are still pretty tiny little things, but they are adorable and lots of fun to play with. 

Lillie and Sophie are both having a blast with the cats, and despite what it looks like in the picture below, are doing a pretty good job of not hassling them too much. It helps that Sophie is still a little bit afraid of them, so isn’t as eager to pick them up as we expected. That probably won’t last, but for now the kittens are settling in well.

I’m sure we’ll post more pictures soon, but so far we’re spending our time playing with the kitties rather than taking pictures of them

Lillie, Aubrey and Sophie making butterflies from old magazines…

Totally cute…

They had a 400 year old tree section. You draw a date out of the bowl and try to find the tree ring that corresponds with that year. Practical application for dendrochronology.

                                 Lillie

Sophie, Mommy, Poulo

               Aubrey