off-roading with arizona lewis

this is arizona lewis... aka heather.
tyson thinks she's pretty awesome.
so do i.

arizona lewis takes amazing pictures.

heather was a cheerleader with me in high school.
she stood behind me, to the right for two years on the football field, and she made me laugh a lot.
she's still pretty freakin' funny.
we reconnected via blogs/facebook a while back. (because who hasn't, right?)
since then i have been living vicariously through her exciting arizonalewis.blogspot.com life.

tuesday night, we rendezvoused in a little orchard off olympia street in kennewick, washington for a photo shoot.
rick pointed out how funny it was that she now lives in arizona, we live in oregon, and yet we were in washington for the pictures.

i can't say enough about what a pleasure it was to have her take our photos.
she picked two beautiful settings.
we got down and dirty- literally.
we even did a little illegal off-roading.
so worth it.

see for yourself.
and brace yourself... i have a hard time picking "favorites", so there are a lot of pictures.















this was our next setting... hence the off-roading.

love this one!

arizonalewis, thank you, thank you, thank you for such a wonderful picture-taking experience.
i was genuinely (and unnecessarily) stressed about it for weeks and everything came together swimmingly.

we love them all, a little too much.

A healthy dose of chaos

Having three beautiful children in just under 3 years brings a fair amount of welcomed craziness to our lives here at the Thames house, but adding three more kiddos for a few days brought it to a whole new level! One of my very best friends, Courtney, was able to pack up her three kids on Sunday and come visit me from the Tri-Cities, while Rick packed up for a four day adventure in Las Vegas with his friend, Aaron, beginning on Monday.

Courtney, the kids, and I spent 3 days playing around the house, going to the park, battling the dreaded bedtime routine, doing multiple head counts, and visiting the Oregon Zoo. All in all the kids did really well together, especially considering they had never really spent any extended amount of time together before this visit. Court pointed out one day that we almost had a kid at every age: Grady (6), Sydney (will be 5 in less than 3 weeks), Riley (4), Tyson (3), Justin (2), and Cooper (1)... how's that for a spread!

We wore the kids out on Monday and Tuesday- withholding naps and running them ragged at the splash pad and zoo respectively, helping make bedtime the second two nights not as bad as the first. So after the kids went down, Courtney and I were able to enjoy some great conversation, bowls of ice cream (her), wine (me), indulge in the season finale of the Bachelorette, and discover that we are both slightly obsessed with Glee... Ok, me more so than her, but I'm pretty sure she'll be close behind now that I let her borrow the first half of season 1 to catch up. :)

Riley and Sydney

We got an up close and personal view of the polar bear's backside!

Tyson was enthralled with the mechanical dinosaur on display at the zoo...

And ever since Disneyland, Riley has become quite the poser in pictures... for this one, she found the flowers, asked me to take a "pretty picture" of her in front of them, then proceeded to pose like she was showing off her glass slipper. :)

Cooper was asleep in the stroller for the next two...

Definitely one of my favorite shots from the whole visit... all SIX kiddos lined up having a snack at the zoo. :)

Getting some air on the "jumpoline" as Justin calls it! :)

Running around chasing each other...

The youngest two boys filling the lawn mower with gas...

And another cute picture of the girls...

I am so glad we all got a chance to hang out... although next time I think Courtney and I will try it without the kids. :)

Rick arrives home from Vegas tonight and the kids are so excited to see him! It's fun to have the tables turned, with Rick doing the solo traveling and me staying home with the kids. This is one of the pictures I sent to him while he's been gone so the kids could say hello!

It sounds like Rick and Aaron found some fun things to do, including a David Copperfield magic show and some comedy. I think I am most jealous of his visit to the Hoover Dam!
I love modern cell phone technology... Rick and I were able to share pictures with each other and use FaceTime on our phones so the kids could see and talk to him a few times. We're looking forward to having him home again tonight!

More Disneyland... finally!

Between working, applying for some teaching/sub jobs (which included writing a Philosophy of Education and answering a few other in-depth questions), Rick traveling to Las Vegas for a 4-day much deserved vacation, and my friend Courtney coming to visit with her 3 kids... obviously the blog has been seriously neglected!

But, here are some more pictures from our Disneyland trip. Crazy enough, this isn't the last of them... hopefully it won't take another week to get them posted. :)

Here is the rest of Day 2 and Day 3... with a lot of focus on Riley's autograph book!

After the princess treatment, which is really exhausting, Riley napped while Rick and I walked around enjoying California Adventure

Then we woke her up to meet Mickey...

... and have lunch here...

Riley was VERY excited to finally meet Ariel.

She knows enough from our Disney World pictures from 2 years ago that we did not get to meet Ariel, and she was pretty convinced that Ariel only lives at Disneyland and not at Disney World.

The rest of the meal we were treated to visits from all the other princesses... except Cinderella of course, which is the one princess we were hoping to meet.




We were on a quest to meet Cinderella, so we made our way to the Princess Fantasy Faire near Toontown where we listened to Jasmine do story time, learned how to dance like a princess, and finally got to meet Cinderella!



The next morning we set out for Toontown in search of Mickey and Minnie! But, not without leaving Princess (Riley's Build-a-Bear bunny) all set up. :)

We found almost all the perennial favorites... and played in their houses!


It cracks me up how well her hair survived the night!

Playing Goofy's piano!

"Hello?!"



We even found Jasmine again, this time she was hanging out with Aladdin!

Day 3 came to an end with a visit to the pool and World of Color- which we LOVED!!!!

Like the pose?? And hair??


Appropriate to get a picture in front of the "R", right?

This was our view as we waited to see World of Color, California Adventures new water/light show.

Afterward, we got some yummy ice cream...

... and this is what ice cream at 11pm does to our daughter. :)

Coming soon: The final Disneyland pictures, and photos from our fun visit with the O'Niel's!