Leo’s birthday was punctuated by our very festive party banners, and my rush to finish his baby book (three years should be enough time to finish it, right? Still haven’t finished my wedding album, but that’s another story).
Tres leches cake was his request again this year.
Because you can never have too many birthday parties when you are 3, we also threw a messy art party at one of the community centers. Leo wasn’t up for wearing a smock, but he a birthday hat? Yes please.
I looked into hiring a musician, and then I looked into persuading Matt to learn a few kids songs. That was a total win – who knew show choir would pay off so well? This man is self-taught and pretty dang good.
Oh, wait, did I mention that Matt was in show choir? He and Dean signed up for (via Rotary’s silent auction) a parent-child musical class at the children’s theater. After several weeks of practice, they performed excerpts from “Bye Bye Birdie”. We were all singing the tunes by the end of the class. Very entertaining! Fiona and Leo and I loved watching them perform!
By the end of March, we were ready for a fantastic vacation in the woods. I had booked our spring break with the Mannhards and Villareals months in advance for cabin camping at Silver Falls, which is a beautiful retreat. Really beautiful., when it’s not pouring down rain.
This was such a grin-and-bear-it kind of vacation. Luckily, the kids are pretty used to biking in the rain, and they had just watched “Three Amigos”, so they were enacting parts of it, riding circles around on “horses” and shooting their guns in the air. Luckily, the three families had reign of our entire “block”, occupying all three cabins, so the kids had lots of room to ride and splash in the puddles.
Matt and Scott put up a tarp, extending the square footage of our tiny cabin, where we didn’t think we’d be spending most of our time… this is actually just the first stage of the tarp design. It actually got more complex as the days passed, but unfortunately, I forgot to photograph the final product. You get the idea. W-E-T.
I think Matt tried to actually get some work done in here.
S’mores under raincover, anyone? Or breakfast?
It finally cleared up enough for us to do a little hike, to remind ourselves why we came, and to see the sights all around us. Silver Falls has many waterfalls within a short walk from the trailhead, and this particular one you can actually go behind, which is pretty amazing.
It was good to get out; we all literally had cabin fever.
We were completely prepared for a downpour, which worked well against the spray of the falls, and anyway, who doesn’t like hiking with umbrellas?
