april flowers

I think I didn't mention that sometime in January Ben's day care teachers decided it was time to potty train him, so they did.  He started by wearing underwear during the time he was at school, then slowly that time extended to all day.  He has been doing great- very few accidents.  Last week he asked to wear underwear to bed instead of a diaper and was dry all night.  We are glad this was a relatively easy process and are thankful for awesome and tenacious day care teachers!

Easter came with beautiful daffodils and tulips and flowering cherry trees.  Corvallis is really amazing in April and May.  After a few weekends of work, Richard has the garden prepped, and already has a few starters planted and some seeds coming up in our laundry room.  He also has been re-landscaping the front of the house, in his never ending pursuit to find plants the deer won't destroy.  Our turkeys showed back up last weekend- we hadn't seen the for a while and it's nice to have them back.  They are less destructive and more interesting than the deer.

spring break

We thought we should do something for spring break this year- somewhere warmer and less rainy than Corvallis for a little break.

Houston sounded like the perfect McManus destination- not too far or expensive to fly to, and some great activities for the boys.

We stayed in the Museum District at a pretty fabulous boutique hotel called Hotel ZaZa.  Their shuttle cars had longhorn skulls on the front- which we took in the evenings for dinner.  You feel like a real Texan when you are driving around with a longhorn.

The first day we visited the Johnson Space Center.  They have a large museum with moon rocks, artifacts, and a Sky Lab mock up.  They also have a large play structure for the kids- not very space like but a good way to burn off kid energy.  The highlight is a tram tour inside of the Space Center.  We visited the astronaut training center which has mock ups of the ISS modules and a space shuttle which is sadly being dis-mantled.  We also saw a Saturn 5 rocket- what would have been Apollo 18, which didn't have the funding to be launched but was fully restored for display.  It was amazing to get to walk around it and really internalize the size of the rocket and the jets.  An Apollo engineer was our tour guide for that section.

That evening we drove to Galveston for dinner, and found a gulf front burger joint, where we got to watch the waves and the pelicans.  We walked on the gulf coast for a little while before returning to Houston.

The next morning we went to the Museum of Fine Art, and saw the touring King Tut exhibit.  We rented the audio tour so that Harrison Ford could talk us through the various displays.  It was very impressive, though we were a little disappointed that the big gold mask is no longer on tour (it's staying in Egypt).  We then went to the nearby Children's museum and the kids could have spent the rest of the week playing there- Owen loved a mini kid city and Ben liked the plumbing toys in the outside water area.  We took a brief break from the museum to swim in the hotel pool, but it had gotten too cold so we quickly gave up and returned to the kids museum.

Our final day we walked to the Houston Zoo.  Our timing was a little unfortunate, as that was the only day Houston had rain.  The good part about the rain was it emptied out the zoo.  Ben still really enjoyed all the animals and even was brave enough to feed lettuce to a giraffe.

end of winter

Owen's vision of himself at 100.

Flooded wetlands after heavy rains.

February and March brought more days of sunshine and more days of rain and more days of snow- including record rainfall that flooded Corvallis and ended in a "rain day" home from school, and record snowfall.

One weekend we took the Amtrak from Albany to Portland to watch the Globetrotters play at the Rose Garden.  The boys loved the train trip and all of us were entertained during the game.  I remember seeing the Globetrotters when I was Owen's age.

Owen and Richard continue to have fun with their Tiger Cub den.  Evan, Cole and Owen make a great team and Richard comes up with fun challenges and activities for them at their meetings.

Near the end of the ski season, Owen rented Wii Ski from the library and after a week of virtual skiing he decided he wanted to try it out for real.  The weekend before spring break Owen and Richard went to Willamette Pass and Owen took his first lesson.  He loved it and did great in the class.  They returned the following weekend where there was more falling and frustration than the first lesson, but Owen is resolved to go back next winter.

oops, i did it again

Last year, I failed to blog between January and the summer.  This January I told myself that I shouldn't miss a big chunk of time again this year... but somehow it's Spring in Oregon but still middle of winter on the blog.

January, after Ben's birthday, was all about getting back to school and getting into the groove again.  This effort was interrupted a few times this winter with snow days.  The boys enjoyed going to the dog park for sledding and building snowmen in the front yard.

In typical Oregon style, when it wasn't snowing it was mostly raining.  We did get a few pauses in the weather to enjoy some mild days outside.  The boys helped Richard prep the garden for the spring and plant blueberry bushes.  Owen was excited to get back on his bike and Ben joined on the trailer for the season's first bike ride to Philomath.  We used one clear day to launch rockets at the park, and another at the children's museum in Salem.