I miss my DSLR

Having a baby is hard on my photo taking...

I never want to drag around my big camera because I have a baby strapped to me. I am so glad I have my phone and instagram, but still, not the same.

Oh well, as of late, here is life documented by my iPhone...

 Free babysitting in the morning while I continue to sleep...

Cutest little boy on our FHE at the park night.

Merrick got his first baseball mitt and ball. I love his name on the ball, and he is a lefty! 

Watch out baseball, here comes Merrick! 

(Isn't it good to be left handed in baseball?)

We couldn't stay away! After cleaning the office on Saturday, we were itching for an adventure. We went back to the Waffle Window...

Then we had to go to IKEA. We dumped the kids in the free child watch for an hour. They had a blast and we had a blast on a mini date (with Quincy) walking around IKEA.

 It was a beautiful night, so we headed to the park for FHE. We rode bikes, (notice NO TRAINING WHEELS!), we watched the clouds roll by, we wrestled and looked cute on the picnic blanket!

blueberries galore

We picked blueberries a week ago. We picked 10 lbs and paid about $9. So worth it. 

We have been eating some amazing smoothies ever since, and will be eating smoothies until it is berry season next year with all the berries in our freezer!

Awesome that my chalkboard still says "Happy Memorial Day" when it is a month and a half later...
Oh well, maybe I will change it today.
Maybe I won't.

the office

I used to feel like I had time.

I owned time.

It was mine.

I would play all day with my kids and their friends and my friends, craft it up, go on adventures, and still have time to make dinner, clean the house and exercise.

Now I feel like I am always doing things that are most important but I wish I didn't have to do.

And the culprit is the office.

Running a business is time consuming, and I don't even really do that! We pay someone to do that...

I have been promoted to Marketing Director, Office Decorator, and bank courier.

Although I love going to the bank because that means I am putting money into our accounts, and although I love to decorate, and although I love me some photoshop, I feel like I don't have anytime for the other things I LOVE.

Here is what has been eating up my time...

I had to design this little postcard mailer to send to all the referring doctors.
Front:

Back:

Then I have been working on changing the hideous decor in the office.
We got rid of the hideous mermaid statue...
Maybe I will take a picture of her to show you one of these days.
In her place we made a little kid station with some Melissa and Doug toys and the IKEA table.
When I have to do stuff at the office, this is particularly wonderful cause the kids just play there while I work.

I took down some hideous art in the waiting room and put up these pictures of Quincy's feet!

Decorating Tyson's desk a little...

The front office girls changed the name on this little birdhouse from the old doctor to the new and improved doctor!

While I was working the other night at the office, the twins were playing on the patient chairs that move up and down, Tyson was dictating his charts and had Quincy in his drawer.

And then we took pictures on the podiatry chairs...
Don't you love the paper with the feet on them?

Portlandia

Have you seen this show? :

Well it makes me laugh. A lot.

There are some inappropriate parts, but it totally stereotypes Portland and I love that.

This is where we live people...

Come visit because the 90s are still alive in Portland!

From left to right:
1. Keep Portland Weird! Reminds me of Austin.
2. Voodoo Doughnuts: yummy and unique
3. My doughnut: The Mango Tango. It had Mango filling and actual Tang drink mix sprinkled on top.
4.Tyson and the Voodoo.
5.Pretty tree lined streets of Portland.
6. The Coolest glittery gold wall by Voodoo.
7. It was approximately 1000 degrees with a million percent humidity.
8. Tyson's Maple Bacon bar.
9. Berkleigh Grape Ape Doughnut. Also another tasty treat.

 From left to right:
1. Powell's Bookstore. I believe it is a WHOLE CITY BLOCK. My favorite bookstore, and what Heaven looks like for my dad!
2. I felt we should park in this one particular parking garage! When we came out of the garage, Anthropologie was right there.. It was like my mothership was calling me home.
3. More Powell Books
4.Gonna go back and get this book! Super cute and rhymed.
5. The Pearl District. My favorite district in Portland.
6. My loves in the Pearl!
7. Portland!
8. Eating our doughnuts.
9. Merrick climbing that glittery wall.

Prepare to salivate.

 1. The Waffle Window. (A recommendation from my friend Rachel.) Best waffles ever.
2. Cheers to waffles. Merrick: Chocolate Peanut Butter Waffle, Berkleigh: Blueberry Cheesecake waffle, Jen: Bacon, Cheddar, Jalepeno Waffle, Tyson: Blackberry and lime curd waffle.
3. The cutest twins.
4. Shoes next to the coolest teal wall.
5. Tyson and the Quinc-a-tron
6. My blackberry basil lemonade
7. The cutest freckled nosed kid.
8. Portland Scenery
9. Eating our waffles!

Portland is so cool! It was so fun to finally explore it a little bit!

a decade

Tyson and I just celebrated our 10 year anniversary yesterday.

Here we are on July 12, 2002:

Here we are on July 12, 2012:

Tyson's new associate and family volunteered to babysit our kids, and so we took off into the sunset for a nice dinner and dessert. We were supposed to go on some amazing vacation together, but we knew we were going to be buying a practice... so we chose to take the kids to CA with us, drop them off at my in laws and stay at a beach cottage in Crystal Cove. Well, plans change. Tyson got a new calling in church, and is the Scout leader. He has to go on the High adventure with the Scouts. It is the week that we were supposed to be in CA, so I am going with the twins to visit, and we will just go to Costa Rica next year with our friends instead.

We thought, he we have been married for 10 years, we need to eat somewhere fancy!

So we picked this restaurant called Bently's. 

It wasn't good.

We realized we aren't fancy dinner people.

We would have rather gone to Willamette Burger Company and noshed on some excellent burgers than eat expensive food that you don't get much of.

While at dinner though, we wrote out all the things we have done in our 10 years of marriage...

I never thought that in just 10 years we would go from poor college students to owning our own thriving medical practice.

What a run...

Wanna know?

2002-2003

MARRIED! Jen graduated from BYU.

Managed apartments.

2003-2004

Jen's first year of teaching Kindergarten.

Tyson graduated from BYU.

Managed apartments.

2004-2005

Moved to Walnut Creek, CA

Tyson started Medical School

Jen taught a 4/5 Combo

2005-2006

Podiatry School

Traveled 20,000 miles in one summer : 

Lake Charles, Louisiana

Las Vegas, Nevada

Ketchican, Alaska

Oahu, Hawaii

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Hannibal, Missouri

St. Louis, Missouri

Springfield, Missouri

Nauvoo, Illinois

2006-2007

Pregnant with Twins

Had twins!

Podiatry School

2007-2008

Traveled for Podiatry School rotations

Arizona, Texas, California

Tyson graduated from Podiatry School!!

2008-2009

Moved to Huntington Beach, CA

Started residency

2009-2010

Lived it up at the Beach!

(Sometimes I wish I took more advantage of living in such a beautiful place, and then sometimes I think, "I did take advantage of living in such a beautiful place."

Residency

2010-2011

Got pregnant with Quincy!

Residency

2011-2012

Quincy!!!

Moved to Oregon for our first "big boy job"!

Bought a medical practice!

(This year was crazy, and although exciting, I don't want to do that much in one year again.)

We have had a great 10 years! I look forward to the next 10 years!

He is the peanut butter to my jelly, my partner in crime, the man of my dreams, my main squeeze, my McDreamy, my companion, the father of my children, my best friend, and my love.

Sharing a gelato crepe. 

Tea Party Take Two

So Berkleigh was really sad when we left for vacation that she wouldn't see her little Oregon besties, Tessa and Emory while we were gone, so I promised that we would have a tea party when we got home. 

My friend Rachel said Tessa kept asking if we were home yet so she could have a tea party with Berkleigh. I love that they love each other so much...

So they came over, decked out and we played!

My favorite is that they Emory dressed as Peter Pan. They were playing Peter Pan in the backyard for a good half hour before the tea party even started.

We always have to shake it up a bit. How much fun is a tea party if it is ALWAYS the same...

So this time we ate out under the grape arbor.

Merrick put on his Peter Pan costume too, so the Peter Pan's served the princesses.

Gotta love these two Hams.

Raspberries!

I hope you aren't sick of hearing about all the fruit I have picked... 

Some garden vegetables and then cherries, because it is BERRY SEASON in OREGON!

So I will be picking and picking and picking fruit.

Who wouldn't when raspberries were 90 cents a pound!

I picked 17 lbs for a little over $15!

It is so relaxing to pick berries. Especially raspberries because you don't have to bend over like with strawberries. The kids run around the patch like they own it, eat berries until they can't stuff another one in their mouth and we come back with berries for the rest of the year!

(PS: I love instagram and not having to carry my camera around all the time.)

I washed and dried them. 

Flash froze most of them.

The squished ones I turned into raspberry freezer jam! My favorite!

 We ate lots of fresh ones, and saved two cups for these

raspberry lemon bars...

photo/recipe credit

Raspberries made quite the mess of my kitchen, but they are frozen, eaten, jammed, and packed away.

My kitchen is clean, and I have berries for the next year to enjoy!

City By Numbers

I wanted to do another summer o' fun series this summer...

I haven't fully gotten my act together. 

I was bummed out that it "wasn't" summer yet, but since Oregon has FINALLY stopped raining... maybe I will start my summer fun. Um, next week...

Here is what we did today though!

We read this book, which I LOVE!

City By Numbers...

This book has beautiful art... 

I have said to myself, "Is this a photograph?"

Here is "number 4":

So we went to our favorite downtown Salem to find numbers 1 through 10.

I was so impressed with Merrick and Berkleigh's imagination....

ZERO:

NUMBER 1:

(Merrick is killing me in those sunglasses.)

NUMBER 2:

(This is pushing it, but it was the closest thing we could find, and it was the last one we found...)

NUMBER 3:

(Backwards, but I say kudos to them for actually finding a shadow that looked like a three.)

NUMBER 4:

(At Nordstroms, where I then went in and coveted these amazing HOT PINK Toms for Berkleigh.)

NUMBER 5:

(Merrick found this one. Can you see it? I was just impressed with him for seeing it, so I gave it to him, even if it is pushing it a little.)

NUMBER 6:

NUMBER 7:

(Seriously, Merrick was so good at this. The seven is the screw and its shadow.)

NUMBER 8:

NUMBER 9:

(Part of the rectangle on the lamppost.)

NUMBER 10:

(I will toot Merrick's horn for him! He was so good at this!)

Anyways, it was fun to be out and to plan an activity like that. They loved it, I loved it. Quincy enjoyed the sunshine, and we all enjoyed this Rocky Mountain Carmel Apple afterwards.