School

It is 9:22 and Peter is still at school.  The girls are in bed and I'm bored.  I suppose I could go clean something.

The Japanese Garden and Shrek the Musical

 This Saturday I went to Portland with my parents to wander around the Japanese garden and to see Shrek the musical.  Here are some pictures of the gorgeous garden.  It was so peaceful there. I loved it.

 I loved all the different fences.  This took some serious work.  That is woven bamboo.

 Mom and Dad in the garden.

 This is my kind of gold fish!  The koi were huge and so beautiful.

These are some images I got from the internet of the show.  

This song is "let your freak flag fly"

 Princess Fiona doing something a little less than shall was say "princess-like"
This scene was hilarious.  Everyone loves a good fart joke right?

My favorite was Lord Farquad!  He was hilarious!  The actor played the character on his knees with puppet legs and he was amazing!  I highly recommend this show.  The music was great, the actors were all fantastic and the story was hilarious.  I loved it!

and....I'm...Caught...up! Last picture post until something else exciting happens!

 Claire playing with her new race car track.  She is a very happy 2 year old.

 Me and Peter on our 6th anniversary.  We are getting old but we are happy.

 The girls at the zoo watching the camel rides.

 Violet LOVES ET the walrus.  She didn't want to leave, not even to see the otters which is usually her favorite.

 The girls in the hall showing off their fantastic artwork on the wall...Magic eraser anyone?

 We went over to my grandparents house and played on the beach and had a family dinner.  It was so fun to see everyone, and it was one of the last hot days of summer ( this week has been obvious fall weather, I'm over it already).

 Me and Peter at the beach.

 Sunset on the sound.  What a gorgeous view.

 us at sunset.

 Grandma and David in Uncle Jeff's mustang.  Jeff fixed this car up before he passed away and it is so beautiful.  David brings the car to family gatherings.  It is really nice to see the car it reminds us of Uncle Jeff and the fun times we all had with him.  I remember when he took us for a ride in that car for the first time.  I just sat in the back and held on tight because he went like 100 MPH....probably shouldn't tell mom that.

 On our last day home before school started the girls and I made rice krispy treats.  The recipe called for cake batter and sprinkles to make them more fun.  I have the recipe on my pinterest page if you want it. The girls had so much fun making the treats.  It's the perfect thing to make with little kids because it's really just stirring and stirring and more stirring.

 Violet and Claire are so different from each other.  Claire would wear sweat pants every day of her life and Violet loves to wear dresses and heals.  She even wears heals with her swimsuit, maybe she is practicing for Miss USA.

 Violet cut her own hair again after watching Tangled.  So We cut it up to her chin.  Dang tangled.  Also she tried carrying around a fry pan one day.  That got Vetoed real quick! I might have to censor disney from now on!

 FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!!!! HURRAY! Violet has been asking to go back to school for weeks!  She was so excited when I told her we were going on Tuesday!  She could hardly wait.  We were there 10 minutes early.

 At first Claire was jealous that she didn't get to go to school.  She even tried to sneak in to preschool and stay.  But she has discovered that when V goes to school she gets Mom all to herself which is exactly how she likes it.  On wednesday we ran errands and she was just chatting with me the whole time and then we went to a park and she got the whole place to herself since everyone else was in school.  She was in Heaven!  Today she fell asleep on the ride home and slept for two hours.  I took a little nap too since the dishes and laundry were mostly done.  It was the best 2 hours!

Violet loves school so much that once we are there she can think of nothing but to get to class, and when I stopped her to take a picture she made this face at me.  I guess I can't complain.  I have a kid that loves going to school!

also I have some more pictures :)

 Claire turned 2!  this called for a lot of celebrating!  You know we never get through a birthday without having at least 2 parties, well in honor of Claire entering the terrible two's we had 3! one with the entire Corier clan at the Brender Canyon Farm, on with just G and G Corier at home and another with the Wright family in Seaside.  We took the girls camping in a tent for the first time.  Claire's face in this picture basically sums up how much fun we had :)

 Here is the birthday girl at Grandma's table enjoying a cupcake :)

 Violet in the tent.

 Violet is a fan of Camping.  Ever since we went on all our vacations this summer she has rotated her requests to go to either the farmhouse, the cabin or the tent.  usually she will settle for the pool or grandma's house.

 The girls playing in the tent either saturday or sunday morning.

 Saturday in Seaside, we hit the beach! I am already looking forward to next summer so I can get my toes back in the waves.

 View of a lighthouse from the beach at seaside.  We saw some seals and a coast guard helicopter flew right over us.  They didn't seem to be going very fast so we think they were taking advantage of a gorgeous day to do some "training" on their way to the crab shack.

 V in her natural element.

 Dragging Grandma and Grandpa into the ocean.

 The moon was out all day, it was a little weird.

 Mom and Dad on the beach.

 Uncle John being cool.

 We went to the aquarium and the girls got to touch star fish and urchins and anemones
we also fed the seals.

 Claire doing a little birthday shopping.....no she didn't get a whole pile of purple furry somethings...I'm not really sure what those things are, they look like a combination of a bunny and a raccoon.  We stopped at the outlet stores and got new shoes and some cool  books.  Seaside is a great place to take the kids.  (just a suggestion if we are still looking for a place to go next year.)

 Grandma made a hostess cake...we all thouroughly enjoyed this, I think some variation of this may be our go to cake for summer b-days so I don't have to spend a lot of time in the kitchen next to a hot oven.

 Violet really enjoyed the cake!  In fact she dismantled it while she was supposed to be taking a nap.  We were all outside while the girls napped and when we came in we saw the destruction and Violet passed out on the couch with chocolate all over her face.

 The cake after Violet attacked it.

 The birthday girl opening some presents.

 Taking a swing at the pinata!

 Pinata's are hard to crack!  I was really trying hard and I couldn't do it.  Peter finally got it to go but, it took some effort.  I think those ribbons are supposed to pull it open to make it easy for kids, but we wanted the authentic pinata experience.

 We went to a restaurant called Camp 18.  It's a few miles outside of Seaside.  It is an old logging camp turned into a huge restaurant.  The food was amazing.

 We were all a little pink from the sun, and it was a great way to end a weekend at the beach.

 I had the ribs, and the waitress didn't even ask me if I wanted a bib she just came over and tied it on me.  I took it off and put it on Claire.

 Claire got up really early Sunday morning to make cute faces at us.

 I think it was worth getting up for.

Violet slept in that day.

she loved the tent.

 We were a little tired, but we had a lot of fun.

 When we got home we still had a few weeks until school started but Claire suddenly became obsessed with Violet's back pack and started wearing it around every day.

Violet on the other hand became obsessed with her swimsuits and began wearing them around the house everyday.  Here is Claire trying to push Violet out of her photo shoot.  These girls are such hams for the camera.   

and I'm almost caught up on the picture posting, I just have a few end of summer pictures and Violet's first day of preschool!