Legos with Daddy

Eleanor loves to play with her legos, especially when Daddy helps. The pattern goes like this:
1. Daddy helps Eleanor build some sort of structure.
2. Eleanor has to get into the structure, sometimes only putting one foot in, sometimes forcing both feet.
3. Eleanor tears said structure apart, piece by piece, being sure not to miss any pieces.
4. Eleanor tells Daddy to do it again.

A Few Eleanor-isms

Each night, before we put Eleanor to bed, we have family prayer. I sit in the rocking chair with Eleanor on my lap, and Grant kneels in front of us, resting his arms across my knees. Some nights, Eleanor folds her arms the whole time and repeats many of the words spoken in the prayer. Other nights, she just isn't that interested. On one of the latter mentioned nights, Eleanor sat fairly quietly in my lap during the prayer. She waved her arms around and touched her daddy's eye and wiggled her body in other various ways. Grant and I tried not to pay too much notice to her and tried not to laugh as the prayer went on. This was pretty much routine for us by now. The end of the prayer went like this:

Me: "Amen."
Grant: "Amen."
Eleanor: (reaching up to touch Grant's head) "Cuuuuute haaaair."

Grant and I both laughed and she went on. (Touching her hair) "Noree cuuute haair." (Back to Daddy) "Daddy cute hair." She eventually, after several times complimenting Daddy's and Noree's hair, made it around to touching Mommy's hair and pronouncing it cute, too. I didn't mind. My hair wasn't looking exceptional that evening anyway. Now she mostly waits until the prayer is over before she compliments the entire family on our hair. I think it's a stall tactic now because she delays giving Daddy a goodnight kiss and being put to bed.


Another tidbit about Eleanor lately might not be quite as funny, but it sure tickles me. Her words are evolving each day. Some change to a better pronunciation, and some regress to a less correct pronunciation. Our latest example: apple juice. She used to say "Bappo" for apple, but now it's "appo." Juice, on the other hand, has gone the opposite direction. She used to do a fairly good job of pronouncing the j at the beginning of juice. That j somehow turned into a d. The last few days, she has been repeatedly asking us for "appo duice." There's something about hearing her say it that just tickles my funny bone over and over again.

"One Heck of a Labor Daybor"

Does anyone know where my post title came from? It's one of my favorites.

The Matthews family has a tradition for Labor Day to do something involving water. This is where it gets interesting: the activity cannot be planned before the morning of Labor Day. So, we always know we will be doing something together, but we don't know what it is until we hear word from Dana and Duane after they pull out the map and see where their fingers land. This year, however, Ben decided to buck tradition and form a plan ahead of time. The only problem with this is that he only told Stu and Care about the plan. The rest of us found out according to tradition that morning, and had to scurry to catch up with the others who were actually prepared for the trip and were leaving without us if we weren't ready. Ahhhh communication. Once the scurry was over with, we had a good time.

We went out to Opal Creek Recreation Area and hiked out to a waterfall called, "Cascada de los Ninos." Here is Alex standing by an old mine shaft that is now boarded off.

We stopped along the trail for lunch. Here's Eleanor playing with some pear tomatoes. That's about all she does with them. She's enthralled with them, and she loves pulling off the "gucky part." She sometimes bites into one, but whenever she does, she spits it out and is done.

A girl and her grandpa.

We brought the stroller for Eleanor to ride in. It is SO nice to have a stroller with big wheels that can handle a trail like that. She was enjoying the ride until Grant (unaware of the mistake he was making) suggested that she might want to walk a little. He thought she might walk for a bit, keep up with us in spite of interesting distractions along the trail, and be willing to hop back in the stroller as soon as it was offered. Silly Daddy! Oh well, she had a good time. She walked almost the whole way to the falls. I had to often remind her to keep walking, but she walked without protest whenever I threatened to pick her up or have her ride in the stroller as an alternative. She was so proud of herself, too. She kept saying, "Noree walk!" or "Noree ikeee" (Noree hiking). She wasn't willing to hold anyone's hand, except for her cousins', who didn't want to hold her hand, or her Grandpa's (briefly). She sure insists on being a big girl lately.

We pushed the stroller empty for a while, but it soon looked tempting to some of the boys. They enjoyed being pushed down the slight hills in the trail without any adult pushing them. Runaway stroller! So bringing the stroller was worth it.

Ben and Cindy had their toddler backpack for Caleb, and as soon as he got out to walk, Eleanor saw that and wanted in. So toward the end of the trail, she rode in the backpack and was quite content. She's quite the particular girl! Eleanor holding Adelynn's hand. I love this picture.

We saw a bunch of old mining equipment.

Talk about a ball and chain!

The beast. Unleashed.

(Alex and I goofed off.)

Carter.

This is Carolyn and Carter on the rocks above the falls. I took this picture from below. I still really like this picture even though it's blurry.

These are the falls. Aren't they beautiful? The water was great, too. It was much warmer than you would expect. It was cold but not the biting cold that hurts until you get used to it.

Alex climbed across a log to get over here to get a good picture of the falls.

Even Eleanor let Daddy get her feet wet-- and liked it!

All dried off and resting on Grandpa.

I think so many mothers could be jealous of this picture: a baby that falls asleep on a pile of rocks. Not fair!

What a good little niece I have!

Eleanor insisted on returning the backpack to Caleb on the way back so she could be in her stroller. It didn't take long at all for her to get to this point. All tuckered out! That's what a fun, busy day and only a brief car nap will do to this girl. What a fun Labor Day with family!

Bamboo!!

Grant and I have heard a lot of hype about Ikea and always meant to go up to Washington to check it out. Now that there is one in Portland, it made it that much easier for us, so we went last Saturday. I never knew it could be so good! There are so many treasures and ideas you can find there. It was packed. Apparently it's been really busy since it opened, but it might have been even worse considering that it was Labor Day weekend. Eleanor had a pretty good time (for a shopping trip that long). The shopping carts are even pleasant. they glide across the floor with ease. Seriously, why haven't they shared these secrets with grocery stores? Maybe it's just because they're new, it being a new store and everything. I don't know, though. I've used brand new Wal-mart shopping carts that didn't come anywhere near the smooth ride of the Ikea cart. Ok, I'll stop obsessing about the carts!

Since the place is so huge, we did a walk-through first just to scope out what we liked and wanted to come back to and possibly buy. We found these cool plants that we thought were bamboo (later learned they're a form of lily- shows how much I know about plants). Eleanor was thrilled with it. She wanted to touch/hold the bamboo, all the while almost shouting with glee, "Bamboo!" When it came time to put them back, Eleanor didn't want to part with them. What does a toddler know about a walk-through, even if you will most likely come back and buy it?

Anyways, it was a fun trip, and we will surely be headed back there again. Grant has promised that the next time we go, he'll let me try some of their food so I can get the whole experience. Apparently you can buy dinner there quite cheaply.

Here are some of our finds:

Well, yes, of course we went back and bought the bamboo! When we did, Eleanor had to hold it (duh), and she had one in each hand and repeated, "bamboo!" over and over in excitement. I received several jabs in the face with her unruly bamboo, and I could hardly hear Grant when he talked to me over the triumphant, repetitive, "bamboo!" At least she found a way to enjoy herself, and I kept both my eyes.

That is a moving truck behind Eleanor. Apparently people come to this place with empty moving trucks just to haul home their loot!

Here's our bamboo!

We found this nifty plastic bag holder. We had all these plastic bags hanging around with nowhere to go, just junking up the area behind our garbage can. Now they are nice and neat underneath our sink. Yay! A few other things we got are some cute votives for tealights, a little pots and pans set for Eleanor's birthday (shh, don't tell), and some cardboard magazine organizers. I saved the best for last. . .

Say hello to what we have been using as a bedside table for five years. Looks like it's winking at you, doesn't it? This is part of the bedroom set my mother and dad used to have. In the picture, it's sitting in my mother's spare room off the garage because we didn't waste any time returning it (although we appreciated the loaner- it got us by- thanks, Mom). We didn't have anything starting out, so we borrowed this. I think we only borrowed one of the set because my mother was using the other at the time. Ever since we moved into this house, we've had our eye on a set of bedside tables from Ikea's website. We always thought we'd make it to Washington to buy them, but that didn't happen. Thank goodness an Ikea opened in Portland!

Out with the old, and in with the new. . .

Ahhhhhhhhh!

Do you hear the angels singing in the choir? I do.

And just in case you're wondering, yes, we bought TWO of them!

More Fun with Alex

It was just so fun watching Alex and the kiddos play around last week at the beach house. I took a bunch of videos of them playing together, so I thought I'd post a few more.

Eleanor is such a copy cat!