blueberries

crouching tigers

Halloween has arrived at the McManus house a month early, thanks to Old Navy and some very cute tiger costumes. I bought one for Ben, and Owen decided he wanted to be a tiger, too. Owen has been wearing his costume daily. His room is now the tiger's den. Ben loves the costume, and also loves any reason for Owen and him to play together.

harvest

cell phone pics

Some low res, but very cute pics from my phone.

Wildcat park:

Helping Aunt Susie move:

At the Bouncy Place, on a toy plane:

Sylvie's swing set with Dad:

He's call Benzilla in these parts:

grandpa, new house, and new teeth

It's September already, and we have had a few days that feel like fall. Now it is back in the 90's- Oregon has a hard time committing to a season. Except rainy season- it is highly committed to that.

My dad came out for a visit last week and it coincided (intentionally) with Susie's family moving to a new house. Now instead of being a 6 minute walk from my house, they are a 4 minute walk. What will we do with all the time we will be saving?

In between moving Susie's house and helping fix up the old house, Dad played airport with Owen, taught Ben how to crawl, and worked a couple of shifts with me on the press. We had a fun visit.

Ben is now crawling all over the house and discovering cabinets full of Tupperware, the springs on the backs of doors that go "sproing!", and Owen's toys. He seems very happy to be mobile. He also has 2 more upper teeth- yes that's a total of 6 baby chompers!

camping, kind of

A couple of weeks ago, we took our first family camping trip. Or "camping" trip, really. We bought the biggest tent $100 gets you (which turns out to be huge- fits 2 full size air mattresses and has a closet- with shelves!) and drove to the coast for the big night. We went to a state campground on the coast just south of Newport. The Stokes were spending 3 nights there and had previously scoped out some primo spots. We showed up Sunday afternoon, Richard set up our tent/condo, and we headed to the beach in our front yard for some kite flying and sand volcano sculpting. Heather and Pete cooked us up a great dinner and we watched the sun set over the ocean.

Richard and Owen had been practicing back yard tent sleeping, and Owen did great all night tucked into his sleeping bag. Ben had a rough go of it, and we spent the night nursing on a cold air mattress. Richard may have slept a little- if he could get any rest over the sounds of Ben crying and me swearing. But the morning brought back our optimism and Heather brought warm coffee.

After breakfast, we all headed north of Newport to meet an NYSC friend, Sam Hopkins and her family. She and her husband are paleontologists with U of O (with much fancier titles than that), and they took us fossil hunting on a beach cliff. We collected 20 million year old fossilized shells and wood, then all headed to Rogue for lunch. The pooped McManus clan headed East for Corvallis, and I think we'll call our first camping trip a success. And I look forward to going again. Maybe in 2 years or so.