The Haballips Experience

So….I’m a little behind in posting.

azzbugged — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 01:59:54 +0000

We have had a very busy and very fun summer. Just for this reason I have not posted since the spring–boo! I will try and do better. Speaking of boo here are a few pictures of Niko and his pumpkin–also named Niko.

I'm ready to scoop and carve.

Niko and his pumpkin...also Niko.

Indian Beach 5-24-2009

azzbugged — Mon, 25 May 2009 18:32:19 +0000

We got up early and made it to Ecola Park-Indian Beach around 8:30 A.M. Low tide was at 8:46. Ideally when tidepooling you should get to your spot an hour or two before low tide. Since we got there right at low tide we only had limited time to view the marine life before water started coming back in.

There were TONS of starfish and anemone to see. There were also a lot of mussels. Here are some pics of the sea life.

Starfish and anemone

After tidepooling we walked along the beach and found whole sand dollars. We also watched about 25 surfers trying to catch waves. Man I can’t even imagine getting into that water–even with wet suits on–it was so frigid cold!

We also played on the beach. It warmed up around 11:00 and we were able to take our jackets off. Indian Beach is in the shape of a horseshoe with cliffs on both sides so we were pretty well protected from the wind.

After playing at Indian Beach we decided to go back to the Ecola Park Main entrance and find a few letterboxes. Niko fell asleep on the 5 minute drive so Jason stayed in the car while I went and found 2 boxes quickly.

Niko was still sleeping so we drove into Cannon Beach to find something to eat. Everything was packed and finding a parking spot took awhile. We finally decided to just get malts and not worry about having a proper lunch. After finishing our ice cream we walked to Cannon Beach and spent about an hour there watching the kites and people watching.

We will definitely be going back to Ecola State Park and doing some hiking in the future–and more letterboxing. There are a lot to be found in a small area.

A+ beach trip!

Trip to the Rhododendron Garden

azzbugged — Sat, 16 May 2009 21:45:06 +0000

Lord of the tree

Niko and I took an early morning trip to the Rhoddie garden this morning. I hadn’t been since we moved to Portland. It’s beautiful. There were lots of ducks and geese. Niko had a wonderful time.

Beautiful

Reflecting

Waterfall

March birthdays

azzbugged — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 04:06:46 +0000

Jason’s birthday was on Wed March 11th. The weekend before we took a trip to the Children’s Museum to kick start the celebrations. We had never been to the CM and didn’t really know what to expect. We went on a Sunday and there were plenty of other kids there. We had a great time and Niko was able to play with almost everything he wanted to. We started off in the construction zone room. This room is so neat because it has a bunch of rubber “stuff” that the kids can shovel into trucks, scales, buckets, loaders, etc….We visited this room twice!

Working hard

We also visited the very popular water room. Niko really liked playing at the water table. He likes to pull up a chair to our kitchen sink and play in the water so we knew this room would be a big hit.

Water!

A whole room with water!

We also went to the grocery store, the dr’s office, the building center, the Bob the Builder section, played in the boat, the ambulance, messed around with clay and a bunch of other fun stuff.

Fixing the sink

Fun with Dad

Twins!

We will definitely be going back to the CM in the future. Maybe in the fall?

On Wed. we celebrated Dad’s birthday with take out, a homemade German Chocolate cake and presents! Niko made Daddy a very special art piece that was framed and is now hanging in our kitchen.

Art for Daddy

Oh boy, cake!

Sunday we had a small birthday party for Niko at the house. It was a time for the little ones to run wild and play together (or around each other!). The kids had fun playing and the adults had a nice time talking to each other and catching up.

Sarah, Caesar and Maggie

Many cooks in the kitchen

Anna and Milo on the road

Lilly

Kadin

Monday March 16th was Niko’s actual birthday. I took the day off work and Daddy was “on call” from his work. We took Niko to the zoo and had a great day looking at the animals. Niko has a killer monkey impression but unfortunately most of the monkeys weren’t feeling very playful. We practically had the whole zoo to ourselves since it was raining off and on. Niko really enjoyed the freedom of being able to run around and we liked not having to worry about losing sight of him.

Wake up Bear!

At the zoo!

We had a lot of fun with the birthdays but I have to say Mommie is a little pooped. I’m looking forward to some chill weeks to come.

Here are a couple more pictures I took of Niko. One is at his new kitchen and the other is just a sweet picture of our little guy.

Niko's new kitchen

Sweet niko

Portland: Cloudy to Sunny

azzbugged — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 01:12:05 +0000

We had a lazy day here at the Haballips house. The day after Valentine’s day. Yesterday we went to a Valentine’s party at The Marcus family home. Niko had a fun time playing with all the “new to him” toys and watching the other kids run around. He really didn’t want to leave but Mommie and Daddie needed to get home to get ready for our night out. We met 4 other couples to dinner at a Greek restaurant down in the Pearl. We had a delicious meal and then walked over to the Someday Lounge for the Cover Your Hearts 2 show. It was rockin! We had a lot of fun singing along to 80′s tunes. We got home late and of course we have an early riser in the household. I got up with Niko this morning. We had a good time together hanging out. Daddie took over in the afternoon so I could catch a cat nap.
It was rainy, blustery and plain ugly this morning. By the time I woke up from my nap it was beautiful and sunny out. Niko and I decided to take advantage of the good weather and went outside to play. Here are some pictures of our sunny afternoon blowing bubbles and playing in the backyard. Man, I’m looking forward to spring!

Water play

All about the bubbles

The key is in the dipping of the wand

Big bubble!

More Bubbles!

Time to go inside.

It’s finally happening….I’m updating the blog!

azzbugged — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 18:46:53 +0000

So, the whole month of December and January are pretty much a wash. Memories have faded and just chunks of “events” stick in my mind. I’ll try to cover a few here and then start afresh for February. Now that the mad holiday rush is over maybe I’ll be able to keep on top of the blog postings from now own. Yeah right!

Mostly the biggest things that happened in December are the big snow storm, Baja coming to visit and Christmas. Beyond that everything else is hazy.

The big snow storm. So for those that don’t know it’s pretty rare for Portland to get much snow. We might get a dusting here and there but it pretty much does not snow in big amounts. That happens in The Cascades but not on the valley floor. Except this year it was different. We got the storm of the century. If my memory is serving me correctly we got over 12 inches of snow. We loved being snowbound. Luckily Baja’s plane arrived on the Saturday that it really started to come down. So she got snowed in with us! Here are some pics of the event:

Blue Heron on neighbor's roof

Hawthorne snowed in

We also visited Peacock Lane with our friends Sarah and Drew and their two children Maggie and Caesar. Here are some picks from the lane.

Peacock Lane

Haballips at Peacock Lane

Christmas morning was a lot of fun with Baja, Auntie Fe and our family. We woke up and Niko opened his stocking. He had a lot of little goodies in there. When Auntie Fe arrived it was on to the main event. We had fun opening presents and enjoying each other’s company. Jason cooked us a big Christmas breakfast that was delicious!

Baja and Niko

I'm on top of the world!

In January we had Jason’s parents come to visit. We had a wonderful time with them as usual. Niko loved hanging out with his Yaya and Poppie. We had a second Christmas while they were here and repeated gift openings and the big breakfast!

Christmas Stocking-literally

Niko opening gift with Momma and Poppie

It’s been pretty quiet since all our guests have gone. We miss having more family here but are thankful we have Auntie Fe here year round to keep us company. Here are a few more random pics and then a gallery of all the fun times we had in Dec and Jan. Hello February!

Niko the Artist

Hot tub bound

lazy

azzbugged — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 23:14:39 +0000

I’ve been putting off entering a new post becaues I don’t have any pictures yet from the big snow, Peacock Lane, Christmas. I need to photoshop them and I’ve been mucho lazy–not to mention having house guests. I hope to have a new post up sometime before the end of January-hopefully!

Winter Wonderland

azzbugged — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 20:52:01 +0000

We woke up this morning to snow. It started before 7:00 this morning and it’s now 12:35 in the afternoon and still snowing! Yea! hopefully that means no work tomorrow–fingers are crossed!

We made it out this morning for about 1/2 an hour to play in the snow. We didn’t stay out very long because Niko didn’t have proper gloves. He also was long overdue for a nap.

Auntie Fe came over a little bit ago and dropped off an early Christmas gift from Baja–waterproof gloves! We hope to get out later this afternoon again and play some more–now that we have the proper equipment. Here are some pics of our fun this morning.

Thanksgiving at the Erving Manor

azzbugged — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 04:43:27 +0000

It’s a tradition. Every year for Thanksgiving we go to the Ervings. It’s gotten quite a bit bigger over the years–spouses and kids have joined the original group. This year was 25+ people. It was the first year to have a kid’s table–and Emily who is seven was deemed as mature as most of us so joined the adults at the big table.

There was a lot of good food and companionship. No football or halftime show this year. Let’s face it we’re getting older, heavier and lazier–Ok, well that’s me mostly

The kids had a lot of fun playing together. This year there was Kadin, Emily, Anna, Kayla, Sky, Milo, Lilly and Niko. They were so sweet to each other. The Erving’s play kitchen was a big hit with the toddler crowd.

"What sounds good tonight?"

"I hate it when I burn the microwave popcorn!"

Happy Thanksgiving!

Beautiful Weekend

azzbugged — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 04:30:13 +0000

Sunday we had a “play” day outdoors. It was a beautiful weekend with a lot of sun. We had just come off several weeks of rain so it was nice to see that bright orb in the sky again. We decided to head out to Forest Park to do some letterboxing. We had clues for about 7 boxes. I’m always so confident that boxing with Niko will be no problem. Each time I’m again reminded of the slow pace of a toddler while walking and their obstinance in regards to which way to go on a path or even staying on a path. We did pretty good though. We found 4 letterboxes in the Musician series–Loretta Lynn, Seals and Croft, Steve Wonder and Joni Mitchell. Even finding these were a little more difficult due to all the leaves that had fallen covering the trails and clues.

Along the way we stopped to touch mossy trees. We checked out snails and fungi. We strolled, we ran. We played in the leaves. We letterboxed. We had a good day.

Petting the trees

'Cranium' Fungi

Hitching a ride

Where's Niko?

Sunday stroll