Life in The Real OC 97045: October 2016

Last year was a long, hard, SICK, year! With two kids in daycare, we were always sick. I bet if you were to look back at my time card last year, there wouldn't have been a single month in the year, including summer months, that I didn't have to take at least one day off in the month due to a sick kid at home. If it wasn't one sick kid, it was the other and I mean it when I say this went on all year long. I remember spending my 30th birthday (last July) sick in bed all day. Despite several ear infections, countless sinus infections, never ending colds, the dreaded flu, thrown in with a couple cases of mastitis, we somehow made it through the year on minimal sleep with bags under our eyes.

Come July, I was ready to start our new chapter at home. July was a perfect time of year to make the transition. Even though I was ready to be at home, there was a large part of me inside wondering if i was 'cut out' to be a Stay at Home Mom. With the nice weather and all the outdoor activities, summer was a nice way to ease into it. I signed Hanley up for lots of camps and we spent the majority of the summer playing outside. Here's an idea of how we got our summer tans on:

-Swim lessons for Hanley. He LOVED swimming!! Every morning he would jump out of bed and get dressed in his swim trunks before he made it downstairs for breakfast and cartoons.

-Soccer camp. Hanley surprised us with how well he did in soccer and how much he enjoyed it. I almost didn't sign him up for it because the camp ran into his nap time but I am glad I said to heck with nap time!

-Preschool summer camp. We enrolled Hanley to start preschool in the fall, so this gave him an opportunity to meet his new teachers and some of the kids in his class.

-Weekend trip to Seattle to visit Aunt Coco and Uncle Kyle.

-Five day trip to Alaska to visit Holly, Sever and Henry. We had an amazing time up there!

-We got in 4 camping trips, including our annual Crescent Lake camp out.

-Tillamook County Fair. The boys and I met up with my Mom, my brother Caleb and a few of my cousins and their kiddos. Hanley decided this will be an annual event for now on :o)

-Parks, parks and more parks! I had a goal to visit all the public parks in Oregon City. We had a lot of fun playing at new parks around town.

-We hit up the spray parks on a weekly basis.

-Hanley got to spend 4 days at my parents house which he loved and it gave Henrik and I some nice one-on-one time.

-Kim and Loren took both boys for a long weekend over our anniversary weekend. Happy 7 years to us!

-The boys and I met Mindy and Jaclyn at Oaks Park a couple times. The boys don't seem to have any kind of fear when it comes to rides!