For Ellen

This week has been a little crazy with some sadness thrown in.  I write with a heavy heart because one of Erik's first cousins once removed (his dad's cousin Betty) lost her battle with Parkinson's this week. We were so blessed to know this brave woman who had a smile and a hug for everyone.  We were able to see her this past spring as part of our trip to visit the Young Adult BSF class in San Gabriel, CA.  We shared pictures of the boys and laughed hard together over their antics.  It was a good day.  We miss you, Betty.  We love you.  We are so comforted to know that your suffering is over and you are safe in the arms of Jesus Christ.

In honor of Betty's sister, Ellen, my most faithful blog reader, I will now share the odd, quirky bits that were our lives this week.  I know they make her smile.  And I want to make her smile today.

First I need to share the apple orchard trip from last weekend.  We all piled into the car on Saturday after Erik got home from his BSF Leader's Meeting.  Then we drove through Starbucks. THEN we started the hour plus trip down the Columbia River Gorge.  That is such a beautiful drive.  Our whole family enjoys it.  Erik and I love looking out the windows at the river passing by and the amazing rock formations.  The boys are hugely entertained by the trains that travel both sides of the river and barges on the river itself, not to mention the semi trucks and cars with various state license plates on the road.

Our first stop was lunch at Taco del Mar in Hood River.  Yum.  Then it was on to our first apple orchard.  I really wanted to buy organic apples this year for our sauce, so I googled it and found Mt. Hood Organic Farms.  I was NOT disappointed.  The Apple House is stunning architecture and it has huge crates of organic apples.  I didn't take nearly enough pictures because I was so busy scooping up the school boy sized organic gala apples for $1/pound!  These are the perfect size for the boys and prevent the half eaten apple syndrome that has plagued us a bit since the boys began eating them directly off the core.

Then came the mega deal.  When the nice man who runs the place heard we were going to be saucing, he pointed us to the huge crate of seconds, apples with flaws and therefore priced at $0.75/pound.  ORGANIC, PEOPLE!!  I was super jazzed.  We loaded up our big pink bin and paid the man.  Happy!  Here's a picture of Paul helping load the bin.

Paul is distracted because there was a very sweet dog with whom he ended up spending the rest of the time on this farm.

 And then it was on to the next farm!  It's not a trip to the Hood River Fruit Loop without some time at Kiyokawa Family Orchards and Fruit Stand.  We didn't actually buy any fruit here, but my mom did.  We go for the play area behind the fruit stand.  It rocks.  The boys love it.  Erik and I sat at a picnic table and enjoyed some down time while the boys played.

Goofy Paul on a tractor.

Luke in the fort.

Shooting his pretend bow and arrow from the wall of the fort.

So happy!

 It was a pretty successful trip.  The best part was the way my house smelled the next morning when we made our first batch of applesauce.  Erik found the easiest recipe ever for applesauce online, and we have been enjoying that business all week.

BIG pot of yummy goodness

SO pretty!

And now for something COMPLETELY different.  Luke bought himself a mini fig this week with his very own money.  What's a mini fig?  It's a lego guy that has been extremely well marketed.  You buy them in these packages that are opaque and you don't know which one you are getting.  Very exciting in Seven Year Old Land.  I nearly burst out laughing when I saw Luke's mini fig.  First the scene he created around it:

A great battle is clearly taking place, but where is the trusty town pretzel eater?

HERE HE IS!!!

I promise you that Luke created this entirely on his own.  He told me that this guy was caught trying to steal the treasure chest.  Erik's comment:  That was very nice that they let him keep his baked goods when they caught him.  Mommy's opinion:  I love that this guy is dressed in traditional German attire, but he clearly came to this party unprepared.  Mini Figs sans weapons in the Bangsund Household are destined to be strung up, but at least they get to hold onto their snacks.

Speaking of baked goods, I made whole wheat banana bread sweetened with honey and molasses yesterday.  It was amazing and is gone today.  I'm going to try my hand at whole wheat pumpkin bread with the Bangsund Twist next.  Check my next post for that action.

Tasty!

 Lastly, Paul asked if he could clean windows yesterday.  Sure!  I worked on stuff for Roots.  Paul cleaned windows.  Amazing.

He mostly just likes to squirt, but the glass surfaces did look nicer when he was done.

Today is Saturday.  Dave, my fabulous father-in-law, is coming for football in about two hours.  The homemade hummus has been made.  It's going to be a good day.

Bits of Random Business

We are continuing to enjoy amazing weather here.  The boys are spending lots of time outside on their bikes and even in the sprinkler.  Seriously.  It's been warm here.  Today is a quiet Monday, so I thought I would catch up on the blogging.  I'll start with something super fun we did a little over a week ago with Dave and Lynne.

Over in northwest Portland something special happens every September.  The swifts migrate through on their way to Central America for the winter.  While they are here in town, the bulk of them, we are talking THOUSANDS of birds, spend the night in a huge chimney that just happens to be attached to Chapman Elementary School, where Erik attended for 4th and 5th grades.  Each evening at dusk they flock together and funnel themselves in for the night.  It is WILD to see.  We went and watched with Dave and Lynne.  The boys loved it, and were actually pretty well behaved.  Here are a few shots.

Grandma brought cake pops!  She's so great.  And Luke's knee is his first case of major road rash from crashing his bike earlier in the day.  He's a tough guy, though, and wouldn't miss the swifts!

We are all pretty enthralled.  Except Paul.  He's probably asking for more food. :-)

If I had a better camera, you might be able to experience how awesome this looked.  LOTS of little bitty birds flying down a chimney!  Trust me.  It was cool.

The next big event in our world involved shoes.  Every fall I notice that the shoes Luke was wearing the previous spring seem to have grown smaller.  Mysterious, huh?  So every fall we buy Luke new shoes.  Paul likes hand-me-downs, but this year was a little different.  I received a coupon for 20% off your entire purchase at Famous Footwear and decided to take Luke over there while Paul was at BSF with Oma on Wednesday.

We walked in the door and I asked Luke, "I hope they have something you like, buddy."

He quickly replied, "Let's see if they still have the Lego shoes!"  Luke had been in this store six months previous when we bought his cleats for football.  Apparently he saw Lego shoes at that time.  The crazy awesome news is that they still had them AND they were on sale.  Love it.  We bought both boys pairs because Mommy is a second born and couldn't bear the thought of Paul not getting a pair.  I had a coupon, people!

The new shoes!

The bottom of the new shoes.  Yes, you can actually attach Legos to the bottom.  Luke has talked about making his shoes taller than the house.  I'll be sure to blog it if it happens.

We also did some academics last week.  Here are a few shots of the fun.

We studied the lungs this week, so then we built one.  It was pretty cool.

 Paul, for whom maps are optional, decided to do "From Rome to Canterbury" tracing the path Augustine might have taken.  Luke is doing the Gupta Empire in India AND the beginnings of Islam from Mecca to Medina.  We fell a little behind in our map work, but both of my children are still destined to be MUCH smarter than their mother.

The boys did their map work on the couch using clipboards last week.  It was fun!

Then we did our Kiwi Crate craft on Friday.  It always comes with two projects.  On Friday the boys "sewed" cutie pieces of fruit out of fabric and then stuffed their creations with cotton balls.  It was great.  Then today (Monday) we decorated the pre-made aprons and they played Farmer's Market.  It was adorable.

Paul starts work on his apple with his pear in the foreground.  He never actually finished his apple because a neighbor dropped by and while I was chatting with her, he snipped the yarn WAY too short.  But he doesn't care, so it's all good!

Apple!

Luke and his fruit.  Cute!

Then came the aprons.  Okay.  Here's the deal.  Neither boy wanted to decorate their aprons.  They just wanted to play with the pretend money.  So I decorated the aprons!  They sent these great fabric crayons and stencils.  I couldn't resist.  Both boys are thrilled with the results.  :-)

The boys look goofy in this shot, but it's the best one of the aprons. ;-)

I think I will finish off with a little something that has nothing to do with anything.

The Oregon Ducks are a really good football team.  I like watching them play.  My father-in-law converted me from a die-hard UW Husky (and we were dying pretty hard at the time) to a Duck.  It wasn't a hard sell.  The Ducks were under Mike Bellotti at the time.  They won more than they lost.  It was fun to cheer with my dad-in-law.  That was about eleven years ago.  I've been a Duck fan for eleven years.  I remember Joey Harrington.  I was sad when Dennis Dixon was injured in 2007.

But NOW folks are saying they can't believe I'm a Ducks fan!  These are people that knew me when I lived closer to Seattle than Eugene.  These folks knew my rather severe devotion to the Huskies at the time.  I think THEY think that I've jumped on board the Ducks train recently and am just a fair weather fan.  Not so, my friends.  I can prove it.  Most of my Ducks t-shirts are size L or XL, and we ALL know that I haven't worn those sizes in years.  ;-)

One more thing.  Why do people hate the Ducks?  Is it because they win or because Chip Kelly gives hilarious interviews right before half time?  Unknown.