Happy Birthday, Liam.

I can't believe my baby is one.



Jason made this video, and showed it at Liam's party last night (he actually turned one on the 10th). It made me cry just a little....

Link to all the b-day party pics

My adorable family

We have at least 35 squajillion pics of our family. But not very many of the four of us all together, and no professional pics. Jason and I both needed headshots, and so we decided to just get family pics at the same time. Jason knows Lisa Teso through her husband/flickr so he had her take our pictures in Laurelhurst park and they came out SO. GOOD. Love them all. Sadly, we aren't millionaires (yet!) so we had to narrow it down to 35 out of the 160+ awesome ones she sent us to choose from. And here are a few of my absolute favorites:

Hero Burgers!

For everyone who asked, here's the hero burger recipe. Make them, they are weirdly delicious.

You need:

*1 lb. raw hamburger or a mix of hamburger and ground sausage. I like the mix.
*1/2 chopped onion
*1 can tomato soup
*1/4 c. Worchestershire sauce
*crushed garlic - however much you like. The original recipe says one clove, I think we
used about 4.
*steak seasoning
*oregano
*hero buns
*fresh tomatoes
*cheese, whatever kind you're into

First mix 7 ingredients together in a bowl. Then split the buns in half, lay them out on cookie sheets and broil the bread until it's brown and toasty. Take your hamburger mix (yes, it's still raw) and spread on the buns. Kind of squish it in a little. Cook your hero burgers @ 400 for about 10 minutes. Push the meat down again. Then cover with cheese, and put them back in to melt the cheese. After they're done, put slices of the fresh tomato on top, and eat. Ketchup for dipping is also delicious :)

Halloween, and my crafty MOM!

My mom made Ben, Liam, and Amelia some fabulous costumes this year. She spent four straight days sewing, and they turned out so cute! Liam is an elephant, Amelia is a pink kitty, and Ben is the Green Lantern. We went to Ben's school Halloween party Friday night, and then Saturday Jason's mom & Charlie came up, and Laura, Jake, Amelia, John, and Aziza all came over for Hero Burgers and Trick-or-Treat. I love Halloween!!!

The School Party

VERY Powerful!


Snuggly


Costume Parade


One of Ben's little buddies


Sleepy Liam

Halloween!!

It's not Halloween without Hero Burgers


Mmmmm


Cousins ready to go!

Out Trick or Treating





Yum....

BYOP

Pumpkin Carving Party.

Pumpkins everywhere....



Amelia!

Liam!

Ben!
Okay, it's Ben's pumpkin. He was running around playing all night and I don't have any pictures of him in his cute pumpkin party shirt. Oh well. He did this all by himself!!


Pumpkins lit up


Pumpkin Family

Pumpkin Patch

Liam's First Trip to the Pumpkin Patch:



Caramel Apples... yummy.


Corn Maze




Waiting in line for our tractor ride


On the tractor, riding to the pumpkins!

A very productive morning.

The other day I stopped at Laura's house, thinking we could do some crafting. Of course I didn't bring any crafty stuff with me. I didn't plan ahead much. At all. But we decided to just go for it, and we got her boxes of random fabric out, and got crafting. Amelia helped by taking a nap, and Liam helped by crawling around the kitchen getting into things. But in just a couple hours, we whipped up some pants for Liam and two skirts for Amelia. Sadly Laura's insanely cute skull skirt doesn't fit her. Dang.
It's still super cute. And maybe Beth's baby will be a girl, and then she can wear it!

Skirt and pants I made - Brown wool with blue and reddish stripes, cotton hearts on Amelia's skirt.





Laura made the cute little skull skirt. I want one in my size.

The sweetest thing.

Tonight at dinner Liam was shrieking and making silly baby noises, and Ben was cracking up. Which of course made Liam shriek more and louder. He loves laughing with Ben.

I grabbed the flip to get a video of their silliness, and got Ben saying the cutest thing ever. It makes me so happy to see them laughing together and to hear Ben say this to Liam. (He says "Ohhhh I'm so glad you're here, Liam!" at the end of the video!!") I hope they'll always adore each other...

I love these boys!

Ben's First Day of Kindergarten!!!

But not at the school we thought Ben would be going to!!!

Portland has a transfer lottery, which means you can apply your kid to go to any school in the district (if it has space). There are a several charter/magnet schools in Portland, which are 100% based on the lottery. We had applied Ben for the lottery way back in March, for the Creative Science school, which is a math/science/technology focused school that teaches using the constructivist method. It is perfect for Ben (and our family) and we really, really, really wanted him to go there. But he did not get in.

We were okay with that, because we live in a great school district so he could just go to our neighborhood school. Anyway, Ben was supposed to start at Laurelhurst today. We were all set... met the teacher, his supplies were there, we'd been talking about it all summer... and then yesterday morning I got a voicemail from the school district saying that a spot had opened up at Creative Science School and Ben was next on the waiting list!!! The spot was ours for the taking!

So, we hopped on the bike and rode over, got another tour of the school (since we hadn't been there since February), met Ben's teacher, and registered him. It took pretty much all day for Ben to wrap his mind around the new plan. But by the end of the day, he was excited to go to Creative Science. We spent the rest of our last day of summer hanging out, going to Ben's favorite video arcade, playing Sorry, and playing with Laura and Amelia.

This morning, I made Ben a special pancake breakfast. Jason went to work late and so he got to have breakfast with us and come along to drop Ben off. I made Superhero Star pancakes for Ben. The star didn't work out so good...
But he liked them anyway.


I packed him a special lunch, complete with strawberry milk, peanut butter and honey sandwich (his favorite!), a peanut butter panda bar, cashews and a little bit of chocolate covered raisins. Maybe not the healthiest ever, but hey it was all organic and made with "good" sugar, so whatever. It was the first day.


On our way...

Brothers

Fighting pose, of course.

G.I. Joe backpack!




Waiting for the bell...


Room 6.


Signing in


Getting settled


Bye Ben!!!!

Gotta hug the brother, too


I made chocolate chip cookies to give him after school. He was super excited... He said "You made me these? You're AWESOME! High five for THAT!"

High five mom!


I think he had a great day... he said he made some friends, and two girls from his preschool are in his class, so that's pretty cool. He loved recess and eating in the cafeteria like a big kid.

I'm so excited that he got into Creative Science! Even if it was last minute and a little crazy. Hooray!!!