The weekend

My little hikers. Awww. And this time, G carried his own pack, all the way!The photographer and sons. C bought himself his camera finally. It is a Nikon D40. Sweet pictures. He is really good. And the camera, of course, helps.

This is the way we pack the baby, pack the baby, pack the baby. He is getting so huge. And he puts off a ton of heat when he sleeps. Whew! That brown thing hanging down next to him is his favorite toy--the end of my braid.

After the big boys went to bed, the little one helped me in the kitchen. First he removed all the extraneous stuff from the cupboard:

Then he looked to see if there were any treasures inside. Most everything hit the reject pile. He wasn't very impressed when mom declared it bedtime and undid all his hard work!

The weather cooled down just a bit into the 80's so we took another hike. This time to Forest Park in West Portland. Portlanders are extremely proud of Forest Park and rightly so. It is beautiful. You can hike for days and be on a different trail each day. Although technically you aren't supposed to camp in the park. But seriously, who would know?
Anyway, we took a short loop on Aspen Rd to Wild Cherry trail, to Wildwood trail and back to Aspen via Savier Rd. Road, avenue, street, I dunno. Close enough. It was beautiful. From Savier you can look out over Portland. It is some view. Would be better without all the haze from fires, so we'll have to go back when the air clears a bit.
I must say that I am getting mighty out of shape. I was exhausted from an easy 2.8 mile hike! Not good. I need to get out walking again. No wonder my pants are getting tighter. But enough about that.
The kids seemed to have fun. There were moments of whining of course. They wanted to take the shortcut back to the car at one point. But I told them that if they finished to loop we'd go to Old Wives Tales for dinner. That did the trick. They finished the loop just fine of course. So did I am proud to say.
Today M is off to scout camp. He goes early each morning to hitch a ride and have fun all day. Tomorrow, I'm doing my duty and volunteering to drive up and follow the boys around for the day. I have to be ready to go at 7:45. That should be some feat, as I'm usually just rolling out of bed about then. But I did manage to get breakfast made and M to the church to meet the rides at 7:30 this morning. Go me! Let's see if I can do it all week. I'll have to think of a reward for me if I manage that. Maybe a date with my cute husband.