summer fun

Summer is finally here. We are thoroughly enjoying the sunshine and warmth, trying to be outside as long as possible. Dalia starts swimming lessons tomorrow, but for today, we enjoyed the sprinkler and the silly plastic pool in the backyard.

We went to Forest Park today as well. Sadly, I forgot the camera. Dalia has turned in to a great little hiker. And I think one of her most favorite things to do is throw rocks in the water. While we were hiking she said, "This place is so awesome!" It made me think back to the first time we hiked this trail after returning to Portland 9 years ago. I think we were both almost in tears with how peaceful and happy we felt. We saw an owl in a tree that day. It was almost as cool as sharing it with our daughter, but not quite.

Happy Birthday Aunt Robin!!!!

Zoo Trip

We are lucky to have a membership to the Portland Zoo. It's well worth the money. Today being seemingly one of the very few nice days we'll have in June, we took advantage of it and went with our friends, Jen, Amelia and Zeke. They have a great Pacific Northwest exhibit that includes a "farm" with a tractor and other farm equipment and animals. We sometimes pass this area up, but it's pretty magical.





Also, this season, they have a dinosaur exhibit. Obviously, not real dinosaurs, but they sure are lifelike. They had to make them 2/3 or 1/2 the size of the actually species, which is truly incredible. Some of them even spit. Dalia didn't like that at all. She was pretty funny about it, screaming saying she wanted to go home one minute and then giggling and saying how much she loved dinosaurs the next.





Anyway, as usual, it was a great time with our friends.

Trip to Bend

Dalia and I took advantage of a work trip Mark took to Bend last week. We were so glad to get away for a few days after so many weeks of relentless rain and gray skies and same ol' same ol'. The sun was out almost the whole time we were there, aside from a few thunder showers and some chilly weather, we gladly walked the 10-20 minutes to the park every day. The playground we found (over a beautiful bridge that crossed the Deschutes river in Old Bend) had a boat! for Dalia to climb around in and practice her pirate skills (she says, "oh, matey"). She is also now completely graduated to the "big girl swings", which makes her very proud.

While there, we also visited an awesome library where very little book reading goes on in the kid's area due to the Thomas train set and table and 10 other wall games and huge stuffed animals. But, it was a nice change. We also got to go swimming every day, which just about blew Dalia's mind. She loves swimming. I'm looking forward to swimming lessons at our neighborhood pool this summer. The last day of swimming she decided she wanted to go in without her swimmies and she did GREAT. I'm excited for the future swimming and playing in the water with her.

We had a few fun outings with Daddy, even though he was mostly working while we were there. We got to go out and eat dinner every night and found a couple of nature parks to play around at with Daddy.



Dalia has proven to be as good a traveler as her parents are. We are endlessly grateful for this. We had a great drive home yesterday, eating chocolate and stopping to see some sights. Mostly we just enjoyed the scenery together and giggled a lot.


Can't wait for our next trip! And, to top it all off, we came home to 83 degrees and SUNNY!!!! Hooray. Summer may actually be here.