Owen, Sara &
Andrew Hoelter

Our little girl gives this performance of Blitzen’s Boogie her all at her school’s Christmas program. She’s quite the professional!

This year, as in the past few years, we walked down to the lighting of the Star Trees on Willamette’s campus. A cold, slightly foggy night, good for atmospheric pictures of kids in hats and Christmas lights. The Star trees are 5 Sequoias that were planted in a ring in 1942–they are massive!

In this picture you can see the star shaped bit of sky (thus, “Star Trees”) when you look up from the center of the trees. They say that if you kiss under the star trees you will have true love forever.

(You would, too, wouldn’t you?)

Uncles who make cranberry sauce

and donuts,

Walks outside in rain

and wind.

But most of all, for gathering around tables overflowing with sisters and brothers, moms and dads, cousins, grandmas and grampas.

We are a lucky family!

(Thanks to all for the chance to get together–we’ll do it again soon!)

An Ewok treehouse in Lego! Clearly a geek thoughtful fan’s labor of love. You’ll have to look at Peter’s pictures (coming soo, I promise! – Peter) to see the rest of the Star Wars scenes…

Halloween happened right after we got home. We had two Angry Birds and an angry toddler.

Drew is wearing his angry bird hat (he was designated by Sara as “the blue one”), but completely refused to wear the rest of his outfit. Luckily he is still pretty cute and figured out “trick-or-treat”, so kept up with the big kids for our walk around the neighborhood. The Angry Bird costumes were Owen’s idea, and Sara wholeheartedly agreed. The two of them provided very specific art direction to the project, and I think they were happy with it in the end. At least they were happy with their candy haul, which was substantial. They got 2 FULL-SIZE snickers bars! This is crazy.

Next came Peter’s 39th birthday celebrated with lots of candles and a big cake!

Awww, they are sweet. Drew helped blow out the candles and Owen was photographer. Sara was the sick one on the couch. (We seem to have one with every birthday.)

Now on to leaf-raking and Thanksgiving!

… so that typically fiscally conservative folks like me will say things like “We wanted to go to Disneyland, right?” after I have agreed to buy a trip to Disneyland.

So, we went! The best pictures are coming, but here are a few to give you a sense of what it’s like to take 3 kids to Disneyland. By the way, we highly recommend bringing along a set of grandparents to correct the adult:child ratio.

Here we are waiting to go in–

Owen says “If you took away all the waiting it would be double AWESOME”

Outside Sleeping Beauty’s Castle:

On a Jungle Cruise under Tarzan’s Treehouse–

A (premature) celebration of being first in line for Nemo’s Submarine Adventure. We were first in the, ahem, EXIT line, and the ride didn’t open for another 20 minutes. We rock!

Here is a very sleepy Drew, who managed to keep his eyes open through the (VERY charming) Casey Jr. Train ride through Storybook Village. After this ride, we took the kids back to the hotel for a couple hours of swim/nap/snack, which was the thread holding back mutiny at about 12:30 each day.

My little girl isn’t really into princesses, but she is fond of fairies, and Drew thought they were pretty cool too.

Owen preferred the roller coasters–

We ran into some line zombies… (Thank heavens for camera phones to keep the zombies at bay)

Wow! We really did have fun! Thanks Grampa and Grandma for putting up with us!

Next time, I’ll post the pictures of Legoland (think about the planet of Endor rendered in Legos… Awesome, indeed!

Last Sunday afternoon we went to Portland with a goal of obtaining a new (to us) Harry Potter #4, as Owen and Peter have loved ours a little too much. We made our way to Powells down the park blocks, jumped in fountains (well, Drew did), and jumped off of many planters, steps and lamp posts. Our cool factor was diminished by lots of pigeon chasing and pointing at cranes. We were okay with that.

We spent about 90 minutes in the children’s section of Powells, with brief, alternating adult excursions to the rest of the store.

We walked to Jamison Park and played in that fountain for a while.

Dinner at Deschutes Brewery Portland Pub (Black Butte Porter!), then back to the car via streetcar.

We love Portland!

Things have been a bit quiet here on our humble little blog. Perhaps it’s because, like Owen earlier this morning, we’ve been running and running for the past month or so.

So, to break the silence, here are a few images from Owen’s school Fun Run this morning (held inside due to good-old western Oregon mist/rain/showers outside).

Right after I took the image below, both Owen and the boy behind him fell, and both of Owen’s shoes flew off his feet. He slipped them on quick, but not completely, and ran feet half-in for a few more laps.

Owen ran 22 laps, which means Mom and Dad are writing a big check to the PTA this year.

Drew was in attendance, and cute as always.

Last week was First Day of School week.

Drew was up first, heading off to his very first day of school with his Mom-made lunch bag.

He was so proud. And cute.

While Drew was at school, I took the big kids to the coast for our annual back-to-school beach trip. It was 95° with blazing sun back home, but on the coast we had 59° and fog.

(The ocean is somewhere in the fog behind these two ninjas)

We did, however, find sun a bit further north.

The next day it was Sara and Owen’s turn. Sara wasn’t much into the photo shoot.

Owen is getting too tall for our standard front-porch portrait. Perhaps next year I’ll bring out a step stool.

We did get a few shots of all three of them, but I think the little ones put on their Daddy-wants-me-to-smile-so-I’m-going-to-smile smiles.

All had a great first week, including Mom and Dad who are glad to be back in the school routine.

First you load your camping gear (preferably waterproofed), your kids and some food in a canoe.

Add a boat full of friends.

Don’t run into a snag and capsize your boat.

Then find a campsite, like this one on Wells Island near Buena Vista ferry.

Attempt to dry out your stuff, while being ever-so-grateful for following the impulse to waterproof the sleeping bags.

Cook some dogs and marshmallows…

Watch the stars.

This is not a bear, raccoon or a dementor.

Load up in the morning and paddle towards home!