Playing piano with grandpa garriott

this is the best.

Phoenix visit

Oren and I flew to phoenix for a quick visit to grandma and grandpa garriott. oren was a rock star on the plane - i really had nothing to worry about.

This series of photos is so cute. Oren was clear across the room when grandpa began to play. He quickly took notice, crawled right over and pulled himself up for a better view. He was fascinated. :-) I sure hope he has grandpa's talent.

this photo cracks me up because there are SO MANY photos of us as kids totally attacking grandpa. he was always on the floor rolling around with us.

oren is such an enthusiastic eater. i think grandma got a kick out of feeding him.

We had a nice lunch one afternoon at the clubhouse. I didn't get any photos, but afterward oren and I tried to go for a swim with grandpa - he just was NOT going in that pool. poor guy. we'll have to work on that.

Woodlawn Coffee and Pastry

We have a fantastic new bakery in our neighborhood! We met Sarah and Oscar there on Friday before our flight to Phoenix. so nice to hang out a little bit and play together in their toy corner.

Portland Christmas tree lighting

Yes, we went down for the lighting ceremony. It's something we try to do each year. I love Christmas carols and don't get many chances to hear them, and it's something we love about living in the city and getting into the holiday spirit along with 25,000 other portlanders. I'm choosing to ignore the whole 'terrorist bomb' thing...it was never a true threat and i think it's unfortunate that they had to publicize the thing they way they did. let's scare folks just for the sake of drama. boo!!

regardless we had a good time.

haircut!!

this one was hard for me. i put off scheduling oren's first haircut as long as possible, until ian threatened to do it himself! so it was time...

and his hair looks great! kassandra did a super job.

coast hike

lovely day for a little exercise!

apparently the remains of a 'big foot' was discovered on the beach below us!

mom - can i eat now????

shem, noelle, and elijah braving the wind.

great coastal forest

Halloween and the coast!

ok - there are a lot of teasers here...the cute costume is at the end.

proposal rock, neskowin, oregon

gorgeous sunset

playing football with shem!

cute hat elijah!

hanging out with elijah

ahhh....time to read

we hosted our annual pumpkin carving and it was a ton of fun, although quite different from years past in that the adults were almost outnumbered by babies!!! chaos...but so great!

here are a few of the results:

ok -- here you go!

roar!!! (oren really liked practicing for his costume)

playing in the living room

news!

I'm so sorry...i've really gotten behind on my posting. so much has been happening. just this past week oren is finally crawling!! it's just the cutest thing to watch, and totally melts my heart when he gets excited to see me and crawls across the room to me. yay!

i'm just going to post a ton of photos with maybe a random caption where needed. enjoy.

nice day at the park

a first!

we were working outside in the yard today...oren was adamant about NOT taking a nap so we set him up in his pack-n-play so we could continue to work. he's been working at pulling up for awhile, but today was the first time he made it all the way up to standing! and once he figured it out, of course had to repeat it several times, laughing the whole time. way to go oren!!!

red, red wine (or otherwise known as the garriott family beach weekend)

who knew the washington coast could be so nice! (just kidding) we spent a fantastic weekend in ocean shores, at this sweet little beach house adjacent to a wildlife reserve. It was such a peaceful location, with tons of birds and small animals darting about. and every morning four or five deer came strolling past the house...they weren't in the least bit frightened. well, until lucy caught sight and decided it would be a fun race...luckily she turned right around and came back when i called her. whew! in all honesty she wouldn't know what to do if by some miracle she actually caught up with a deer. she would be terrified!

of course...we ate well. a crab feast by sam, with a terrific beet and goat cheese salad, corn on the cob, and quinoa on the side. and especially yummy - grand marnier ice cream layered with peaches for dessert! what a treat!

so the theme here was relax - we even napped on saturday afternoon!

anyway...a few pictures:

this is the wildlife reserve. a trail led from the house through this reserve to the beach. as flat and open as this seems...i think getting off the trail could lead to trouble in no time. the dunes were just high enough to loose sight of any structure, and there seemed to be no natural way-finding markers. we stuck to the trail.

oren and aunt sam playing on the sofa

getting kisses before bed from aunt carol

breakfast!

dave, sam, carol and oren (where was charley?)

thanks to sam and carol and dave and charley (and ian too!!) for making this weekend so wonderful. we had fun.

italian night!

a couple weekends ago ian's parents invited us out to participate in a fun dinner party. one goal for the evening was to get enough people together to share this fantastic bottle of wine: a 1987 Silver Oak cabernet. yum! you see from the photo it did take quite a few of us, but we finished it off! oren was helping with the decanting, but of course refused any offers for sips. he's such a good boy.

visit from auntie allison!

this weekend was back out to yamhill for some more good family time. allison flew up from CA on thursday and travis, sharon, nathan and aidan came down from seattle. saturday we took a fun trip to the biggest fall farm production you'll ever see! totally a fun time, especially for the kids. apple tasting (with caramel of course) was a highlight for me.

i don't have a photo - but aidan won a jug of apple cider by sling-shotting an apple probably 50 yards through a pumpkin's eye. :-) entertainment, i tell ya!

the gelbrich clan

happy fall everyone!

lots 'o pumpkin

nannie and her grandsons in front of the corn maze

yep - it's a big one. but not as big as the one that won the weigh-off!

hilarious - these faces were painted everywhere.

pretty good view from way up here!

nathan on the zip-line