Admittedly, I have strong competition, but I am working hard to win the title of Amber’s Favorite Aunt.  I don’t have a strategy yet, but I will start by showing off pictures of this beautiful girl’s 1st birthday.

I love this shot of Grandma, me, my girls, and the birthday girl. 

To balance out all the girls, let’s take a look at my favorite boys.

Wesley has the biggest snaggletooth (I yanked out both teeth not long after this).

Here’s the birthday girl.  It turns out that if you really want to show love, you buy them a carrot cake from a particular Oregon bakery.  It was sooooo yummy!

Here’s some of my competition.  Even her name, Joy, gives her a leg up.  Short, cute, easy to say, invokes deep happiness.  I’m aunt “feminized, bastardized version of drunken god Dionysius”.  I need a good nickname, STAT!  And sadly, Joy is as wonderful as her name implies.

Here’s the rest of my competition.  Again, the very name “Aunt Julie” sounds like gems. And, clearly, she gets all the style points.

Here’s my claim to fame—I’m the first person to dunk Amber in her wading pool—fully clothed, of course.  I’m good for adventures that you will come back either filthy, soaked, or both.

So many pictures I want to frame—love this one of Grandpa and Kyla!

The kids were well entertained with Amber’s new pool!

Sandi and Brian threw a great party, and it was wonderful to have the family all together!

And if you’d like to read a more Amber-centric account of her birthday (I do realize I made her party all about me), you should check this out.

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About the happiest I can be is hanging out on the beach with my kids.  They play in the surf and sand, I read a great book (ideally with dragons), and occasionally look up to watch my beautiful children frolic.  It’s a sense of contentment that I haven’t been able to improve on.

I love how IKE (Isaac, Kara, Esther) and Kyla, Piper, and Wesley interact.  My kids always looks forward to time with their cousins, and IKE always make an effort to engage my kids. 

I love them for it as much as the kids do. 

Esther is one of those who can do hair magic.  Exhibits A & B:

Kara very patiently played ping-pong with Wesley and Piper. A lot.

The good news is that my kids play as well as an adult.  The bad news is that adult is me.  Sorry, kids. 

It probably looked like a disaster from the sidelines, but it playing mini-golf as a family was a hoot.  The ten of us divided into 3 groups, and then Wesley went AWOL and formed his own golf team of one.  [I use the term “golf” extremely loosely.]

(Yes, Piper is wearing PJs under a sundress and sweater. We’re on vacation.)

I tried to get the highest score by hitting my ball onto other greens, but Esther informed me that’s not part of the rules. 

Luckily we had Tillamook ice cream across the street for all the, ahem, winners.

Esther and Kara introduced us to Skim Boarding. Although you use the board in 1”-2” of water, it doesn’t take many falls to get yourself soaked.  Or, in my case, a twisted ankle that still hurts a month later. (Yes, I do post-date.  Doesn’t everyone?)

Snowboarding is more fun, but I can stay up longer than 10 seconds in the snow.  Water has always been a bit of a magnet for me. But Kara, Esther, and Isaac looked great on it! 

Esther, beloved, beloved darling girl, has spent a year researching cookie recipes.  And not just regular cookies—wheat-free, dairy free, nut free, soy free cookies.  And she taught Piper and Kyla to make Lemon cookies and Chocolate cookies.

In the words of Genesis…

      And they were good.

 

Ya know what’s in Newport?  An aquarium.  Seattle has a pretty lame aquarium, and I had heard accolades about this one.  All ten of us headed south and explored!

We didn’t even get in the doors before Piper started hamming it up.  She’s a….dolphin?

Wesley as a deep-sea diver is a little more obvious. 

The aquarium was fascinating.  I loved the indoor aquariums as well as the outdoor marine mammals and birds.

We have discovered Piper has 2 fears (though they seem like fake fears to me—she plays possum so often that I can’t always trust her authentic emotions):  1) walking across tall bridges and 2) sharks. 

Ahem, we were in a shark bridge.  Sorry, Pipes.

These are supposed to be shots of our immediate families, but…

…you’ll find a commonality (besides Dan and Dwayne looking very much like their father).  Isaac-Wesley is in both.

I do love my nephew.  Isaac is better read than I, has introduced me to some of my favorite authors, has great insights, and is an interesting conversationalist, but I really value him for just one thing.  He allows Wesley to climb, grope, ride, and snuggle him…sometimes simultaneously.  Having Isaac around is such a nice break for me.

Further proof of Wesley-as-tumor:

Funny story:  Dwayne unearthed his latent desire to own an otter or two (because if two ferrets are bad, three otters are better).  Standing right in front of the exhibit, he started searching for “residential otter containment units” on his phone.  Somehow, he came across this quotation in reference to otter maintenance:

If it’s cute and not prolific, it’s got a bad attitude.

Which basically reduced us to fits.  On our way home, Deborah and I debated whether or not 3 children apiece made us each prolific.  ‘Cause we’re pretty cute.

Okay, two outta three ain’t bad.

We made it to our home for the week at Pacific City, OR.  Pacific City is the place you go to when you can’t afford Cannon Beach and reserve too late for Newport.  But it has plenty of sand….and this week, rain, wind, and clouds.

But that will NOT stop us from dunking ourselves in the ocean.

We try to role model wearing warm, dry clothes, but it hasn’t rubbed off on the kids yet (or the nieces, it turns out.)

Another favorite past time is making sure to get sand in every crevice. 

Ready, set….

ROLL!

(Piper is the orange sand monster.)

Pacific City has a bluff, designed for climbing…and dying.  There’s a very obvious fence strung with clothespins as remembrances to those who’ve died falling off and drowning.

There were an unexplainable number of people on the other side of that fence.  We stayed on the sand side and climbed. And climbed.  Then Isaac, Wesley, Piper, and finally Mama, kept climbing.

The fun part is running down!

Our annual week with the cousins was planned Pacific City this year.  Our determination to take two days to drive 6 hours landed us in Cannon Beach on Saturday night.  Yep, on design, we landed in the most popular Oregon Coast city at 8pm on a summer Saturday with no reservations.  You can tell where our children get their intelligence.

We sat in the car and used our GPS and phones to find and call all local lodging options.  Finally, Dwayne called a hotel that had one last room left.  Matching our intelligence, they were going to discount it deeply, but it was still more than we had planned on spending.  However, it was the last room in town, it was a sweet suite, with a separate king room for the kids, and they had a pool open until 10pm. 

We took it.

And can I tell you about the genius behind Hallmark Hotel?  Each kid gets their own plastic bucket and shovel set AND a beach ball.  The three kids probably cost them about $3, and it was like getting a priceless gift.  In spite of waking up to rain the next morning, we knew the beach was meant to be for us, now that we had our sand pails. 

The donuts from the local bakery didn’t hurt either. 

Pacific City, ho!