First Day of School

 Henry started preschool last week - he's in a split 3s/4s class because of low enrollment numbers with the 4 year olds. It's the same school he went to last year (Burlingame Co-operative), but he goes three mornings a week this year instead of two.  He jumped right back into the routine of school with absolutely no transition problems or separation issues at all. I can't explain how relieved I was about that! We've gone to as many preschool playdates as we could over the summer including a back to school picnic with the teachers the week before school started. I think staying in contact with his classmates and "remembering" about school all summer long was extremely beneficial and made the transition back into school much smoother.

Tomorrow will be my second day parent helping already (only two weeks into the year) because I am trying to knock out as many parent help days as I can before the baby comes! As much as I enjoy having some free time while he's in school, I also really love helping out in his classroom. The kids are so funny and I

love seeing what Henry's up to while in school all morning.

Speaking of the baby coming, we are on final countdown. Technically I have about 2 1/2 weeks left, but I'm thinking she'll come earlier than that. We'll see! I'm already one week past the date I delivered Henry, so that's an improvement!

More Summer Fun

 In August Henry's preschool participated in the Multnomah Days Parade through Multnomah Village. Brett pulled Henry in the wagon and Henry got to toss candy out to the crowd. He loved it! And we loved watching him!

 Here's Henry up at the Rose Gardens after he had his pictures taken up there by a professional photographer. This summer we grew strawberries, cherry tomatoes, tomatoes and a bell pepper. Here's Henry with some of the harvest. I was so happy we actually got some to harvest because I wasn't sure if they would grow or not! We've actually gotten a bunch of cherry tomatoes (maybe 2 dozen) and about 8 tomatoes. Only one bell pepper; but as you can see it's a big one...hopefully it ripens (it's supposed to be an orange bell pepper!) before the cool weather arrives.Our strawberries were harvested more towards the middle of the summer and we got at least a couple to three dozen berries. Not too shabby!

The two sunbathers!

Fair Fun!

 (The video is best watched small...it gets too fuzzy if you make it full screen.)

This summer we went to two fairs: the Clackamas County Fair and the Oregon State Fair. We had a great time at both. It's hard to say what activity Henry enjoyed the most...he definitely loved seeing all the animals but he also loved the rides. The state fair had some other, different, activities that he liked as well including a trout fishing tank and a barnyard animal race at which Henry was chosen to be our section's cheer leader. I was actually pretty surprised that Henry wanted to do it; there was a fairly big crowd and Henry had to go down and stand in front of everyone and wave a flag to cheer on our animal in the race, but he loved every second of it!

Henry with a sheep...this was right before we encouraged him to let a cow lick his arm without knowing how rough a cow's tongue is...he ended up with a pretty bad rug-burn type scrape on his arm where the cow licked him.

 Getting ready for a helicopter ride!

 Pony ride at the state fair!

 Red team cheer leader! Sadly our animal (I can't even remember which one was ours now...) did not win.

 Playing the drums at the state fair - look at the serious expression as he counts out the beats.

Fishing in the trout tank. All three of them took their fishing duties quite seriously!

Testing out an ATV.


The video above shows some clips from the fairs starting with Henry riding the kid's swing ride. I wish there was a way to have captured how thrilled Henry was while riding it; he absolutely loved it! The next part is him and his friend Anna riding ponies at the state fair. Neither one of them looks like they are having that much fun, but they actually did...especially Henry whose horse was the same color as Roy Rogers' horse, Trigger. The third clip is of Henry as the flag-waving, cheer leader of the red section during the barnyard animal race. Finally the last clip isn't actually from a fair, it's from Oaks Park, but it fit in so well with the rest of the clips I had to include it. Henry, Mom, and Brett were supposed to race down the big slide, but Henry took off early and "won" the race by a landslide...and takes obvious delight in his victory.

Swimming Lessons

Henry just completed two weeks of swimming lessons at the Wilson High School Pool (through Portland Parks and Rec). During the summer the classes meet every day for two weeks which really gives the kids a chance to practice, practice, practice their skills. In addition, we stayed after lessons and swam at least 75% of the days as well. The Sunday before Henry started lessons, he also started swimming on his own! Brett bought him goggles and those were the key to giving him the confidence he needed to really keep his face down in the water and swim, swim, swim. In the short two weeks since his lessons began the improvements have been amazing. He can swim and glide for greater and greater distances, he is starting to be able to pop his head up and take little breaths so he can swim longer, he can just about dive in the water, and he has no problem jumping in. He will still need to repeat this level of swim lessons because he can't quite float on his back by himself yet or do a front glide the way they want him to (arms straight up in front of him and not paddling). I'm hoping to be able to keep him in lessons throughout the fall and winter at the SW Community Center as much as possible so he can continue building his skills.

July Round-Up

 I think that so far this summer we've struck a nice balance between doing lots of fun activities and also being relaxed. While it would have been nice to have Henry utilizing the free summer days for classes, it also has been really great to have lots of free days where we can just do whatever strikes our fancy. Just like Henry is doing in this first picture! Taking a break from running through the sprinkler at Gigi's house.

 His preschool has scheduled a couple playdates each month during the summer so that the kids can stay in contact with each other. One such event was at Oaks Park - here's Henry on the Tilt-O-Whirl. Last summer when I took him on it he cried...this summer he begged to go on it again and again. I could only handle going twice. I offered to find someone else to ride it with him, but he decided not to. Next time we'll take someone with us who can share in the dizzy-duty!

 We've only gone to the beach once so far this summer. Hopefully we'll go more in the second half of the summer because Henry does love it. We went to Cannon Beach for the day with mom and, as you can see from this picture, the weather was less than ideal. Oh well - Henry had fun regardless!

One place we are spending a lot of time in this summer, are the various Portland area pools...especially the Sellwood and Wilson pools. This picture is at the Wilson pool. Henry's swimming has improved so, so, so much this year and I can't wait for him to take his swimming lessons (coming up in August) to see if we can get him actually swimming on his own.A bunch of his preschool classmates' birthdays took place this month which was another great opportunity for him to see his classmates. Here are some of them at Pump-It-Up for a birthday party.

Finally, just for fun, Henry with Batman and Superman at the mall. :)

4th of July

 After about a week of excitement building up to the big day, the 4th of July finally arrived.  We had set off a couple fireworks each night since about the first of July...so Henry was all set and ready to go when the 4th finally arrived.


We had a BBQ at Uncle Scott's house and did our fireworks there before it even got dark out! Here's Henry having a sparkler lightsaber battle with Daniel. Clearly, as the next picture shows, he was quite excited for the fireworks.

 Then we went downtown to see the fireworks which Henry was once again very excited to see. Last year he wasn't that impressed by fireworks in general and there's no way he would have enjoyed the downtown ones because of how loud they are...but this year he definitely loved them.  We watched them from the east side of the river, which was cool because we had the backdrop of downtown behind them.

And, finally, the hot weather has arrived! Here is Henry at Jamison Square in the Pearl yesterday. He's doing what has become his signature move...

Camping

 Last weekend we went camping at a camp site in Welches, Oregon, called Mt. Hood RV Village. It was a huge camp site with spaces for RVs, tent camping and cabins. We wisely booked a cabin and, as it rained on and off all weekend long, were so happy we had the cabin. Especially because the cabin had a porch which allowed us to still cook our food without getting wet. The cabins are called "rustic cabins" for a reason. They are basically wooden rooms with a couple cots and a ratty old couch. But it also had electricity so that was an added bonus. The bathrooms were next door and we had our own picnic table, fire pit and bbq. We borrowed a camp stove from Joan and Bill so we were pretty well set. We made chicken and vegetable skewers the first night. Pancakes and sausage for breakfast, hot dogs for lunch, and steak and beans for dinner the next night. When it wasn't raining we went on walks/bike rides and Henry spent a lot of time cooking over the campfire. He cooked just about anything we would let him...including melons! When it was raining we went to the indoor pool, the game room and even took a trip up to Timberline Lodge.

 On Saturday we went to the Rainbow Trout farm where Henry and Brett fished. They caught four fish in about 30 minutes...which actually was longer than I thought it would take because usually you get a bite as soon as you put your line in but we had to cast about 5 or 6 times before we caught one - which was good...it stretched out the time we spent there a little bit longer.

On Saturday night we went to the lodge and played a few rounds of Bingo. I think Henry liked it, but he started to get a stomach ache that got progressively worse as the evening wore on so we left Bingo after about a half an hour. Poor guy kept feeling worse and worse and it even woke him up in the middle of the night. He seemed feverish too so we gave him some Tylenol and then he was able to sleep through the rest of the night.

All in all it was a great experience but next time we go I'll plan it for August so we will get some warm weather!!