Hiking!?!

You will NOT believe what we did today.  WE can hardly believe what we did today. Let me start at the beginning.

Erik had the day off from work today, but our plan had originally been for the boys and I to head to a friend's apartment complex to swim in the pool and hang out.  The early afternoon weather was not cooperating.  The other mom and I spoke around 12:30, and it became clear that we would need to reschedule.  Luke especially was VERY disappointed.  It took him the better part of an hour to recover during which I formulated a plan.

We all got in the van and headed to the ultra benign fireworks stand about six blocks from our house.  The boys had never visited a fireworks stand before.  They liked it.  We didn't buy a ton of stuff, but everyone got to pick a few small things.  After the fireworks stand, we hit a drive-thru Starbucks and headed for the carwash.  Yes, the carwash.  They love it, and Erik's company pays for it because it's the car their rep drives around.  They want it to be clean.

After the carwash, we headed for a park that is more like a Nature Preserve with the intention of allowing the boys to run around on the trails.  It was closed.  Boo.  We grabbed our smart phones and rerouted to a different "nature-y" destination, REALLY hoping it would be open!

Powell Butte Nature Park was a hit (Luke's exact words!).  We parked the van, got out and were immediately greeted by a stunning view that included Mount Hood, Mount St. Helen's, and Mount Adams.  Beautiful.  I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story.

 In the visitor's area there are all these different gages of pipe filled in with cement.  The boys spent a few minutes playing on them.

Think of these as the before pictures. :-)

 Paul sits on the largest one.

We started up a paved path, purely with the intent of exploring a bit. Erik had a map.  We knew the boys wanted to get to the forest-y part.  But first we had to hike through this simply stunning, daisy-filled meadow surrounded by views of mountains.  It was gorgeous.  And I got the boys to pose for this picture.

After about forty five minutes of walking, some uphill, but mostly flat, seeing many cool insects and "tracking a coyote" we FINALLY made it to the forest.  And it did not disappoint.  The boys were completely enthralled with the environment.  They walked ahead, found cool stuff and reported back to us.  We even convinced them to walk silently like Hobbits at one point so we could all listen to the forest sounds.  So cool.

 A very cool snail that we spotted.

 Paul just really wanted me to take a picture of the forest.  Here it is.

We probably spent a half hour walking downhill into the forest.  And all I could think was, "What goes down, must go up again...guh...how is this going to end?"  Sure enough the next half hour was spent walking up out of the forest, back to the top of the butte.

When we reached the top of the butte, we still had about a forty five minute walk to where we parked the van.  Okay.  My people have NEVER hiked before.  Guess what?  They did fine.  Yes, Paul was tired but only mildly whiny for the last half hour.  He didn't cry.  He didn't quit.  Nobody carried him.  He and I just trucked along talking about all the water we would drink when we got back to the van.  Because, yes, we headed out on our explore leaving our water bottles in the car.  I don't think we really knew what we were doing.  I know we didn't.

 This is about fifteen minutes from the end and we all just had to stop and admire the view again.

 Mount Hood peeking through the clouds.

After over two hours of hiking, we arrived back to the parking lot.  And this is what the boys did:

Those are the after pictures.  They were definitely tired, but also completely thrilled with the experience.  We drove straight to Subway where Luke ate his very first footlong sandwich.  And a bag of chips.  And a cookie.

All in all, we had an absolute blast and will most definitely be returning to Powell Butte.  We brought home the map and our plan is to park in an area that is by the forest and hike ALL of those trails this summer.  Anyone else surprised at the addition of this activity to the Bangsund repertoire?  Um...I am!  But they loved it.  And it was beautiful and mostly relaxing and awesome.  AND that was on a day when we weren't REALLY prepared for hiking.  Next time we'll have water bottles and shoes with toes!  It will be epic.

Non-Traditional Last Day of School

Today was our last day of school.  Yes, it is Sunday.  Let me explain.  Our last day of school was scheduled for Friday this past week.  It was even looking like we might finish by Tuesday or Wednesday instead.  And then I got sick.

Last Saturday afternoon the fever started accompanied by a sore throat and a dry, unproductive cough that kept me up at night.  Symptoms worsened, resulting in zero church last Sunday and no school for the entire week.  Have you ever tried to read aloud when you couldn't stop coughing and hacking?  No.  Good.

In addition to being unable to read aloud, I knew that the day we finished school was the day I needed to take the boys to the donut shop near our house.  It's tradition.  We drive by this place at least six times every week.  They used to ask when we could go.  Now they know.  On the last day of school (and the first day of school).  Period.  Not having the energy to even take Luke to his piano lesson and sit in the car, I knew I would not be able to accomplish the donut shop this week.

But today is different.  The Daddy-Man is home.  He can do the donut shop!  So, I grabbed my water bottle, took my Mucinex, and settled down on the couch to finish school with the boys.  For the record, this involved four pages from The Usborne Book of World History reviewing all the ancient history we have done this year followed by a chapter from George Muller narrating the peaceful end to his amazing life.  Ever tried to read aloud while coughing, hacking, and crying?  There were a few times that Luke had to read for me, but we made it.  And it was a fabulous book.  I highly recommend it.

Then came the pictures.  I love our curriculum.  Sonlight provides my boys with so many fabulous books that they cannot possibly pick a favorite or even their top three.  I let them choose as many as they wanted.

Paul chose: Roman Diary, Mr. Popper's Penguins, Homer Price, The Last Little Cat, Understood Betsy, Henry Huggins, Mountain Born, Charlotte's Web, Detectives in Togas, The Wheel on the School, Tippy Lemmey, George Muller, and Gooney Bird Greene.

 Luke picked The Chalk Box Kid, Roman Diary, The Paint Brush Kid, Mr. Popper's Penguins, Henry Huggins, The Wheel on the School, A Question of Yams, Tippy Lemmey, The Year of Miss Agnes, Homer Price, Charlotte's Web, The Little Cat, Understood Betsy, Mountain Born, Gooney Bird Greene, George Muller, and Detectives in Togas.

Were there any they didn't pick?  How many books did we read this year?  There were some that didn't make the cut, but not many.  I would say there were probably fifteen other books that we used this year, none of which were bad.  They just weren't favorites.

My favorites?  Sure, but don't ask for a picture.  I'm still in pajamas and the name of my hairstyle is "And I didn't brush my teeth either."  But I can tell you my favorite books from the year.  In no particular order:

George Muller - The true story of how one man, called and equipped by God, cared for over 10,000 orphans over the course of his life, depending solely on the power of prayer and God's provision for all their needs.  Um...life changing book for our household.

Mountain Born - A coming of age story that follows a boy and his bottle fed ewe from her birth through her lambing years.  A leader of her herd, she teaches the boy about both responsibility and love.  Absolutely beautiful book.

Charlotte's Web - Of course I had read it before and probably had it read aloud to me at least twice.  But when I read the passage at the end describing Charlotte's loyalty and true friendship, I was again moved to tears.  It was that well done.

Gooney Bird Greene - Sometimes you just want to laugh.  This is the book to read.  Gooney Bird arrives on her first day in a new school wearing a pink tutu and cowboy boots.  She is an instant hit with her peers and her teacher as she regales them with absolutely true stories of arriving from China on a flying carpet and having her pet cat consumed by a cow.  Seriously. Funny. Stuff.

The Wheel on the School - Speaking of funny, nothing was more fun than hearing my boys repeat lines from this classic imitating my pathetic attempt at a Dutch accent.  The book itself follows a small Dutch village's school children in their attempt to bring storks back to Shora by acquiring a wheel for the roof of their school.  The entire community is drawn together in this quest.  The intergenerational aspect of this book was my very favorite part.  That and hearing Luke say, "Oh! Oh, Jella stole that wheel."

I could easily pick ten more, but I'm tired.  So, I'll end this post with a send up to Reading Rainbow:  But don't take my word for it!  :-)

Special Guests

Memorial Day Weekend was filled with special guests in our house.  It began Friday when Mr. Mark Tai arrived from the north.  Everybody loves Mr. Mark and his visits are always super fun.  I am always impressed how this bachelor dives into our lives, entertains the boys, does dishes when nobody is looking and manages to smile for real after my children melt down in the Starbucks drive thru.  He is simply quality.  I forgot to mention...he and Erik have an absolute blast video gaming together.  It's good for men to have man friends.

A few of my favorite pics from Mr. Mark's visit:

 Mark had been crouching down when Paul leaned over his back to look at something with him.  Then Mark stood up.  Tall dude!  What happened next was Paul being slowly flipped upside down over Mark's shoulder and gently lowered to the floor.  It was quite the ride!

Mark had never read The Boxcar Children.  I think Paul found this tragic, so he had Mark read the first few chapters aloud to him.  I believe Mark finished the book on his own while he was here.  :-)

Just as Mark was heading home yesterday afternoon, our next special guest arrived.  One of the pastors at our church and his lovely wife had a beautiful baby girl six months ago.  They dropped her off around 3pm and headed for their first night sans baby since her birth.  BABY GIRL IN MY HOUSE!!! Okay.  I'll just let the pictures tell the story.

We are all in love with this girl.

 She can do this.  She fits in here.

 Playing with Paul

 Luke plays a game with the giraffe behind her head.

Being entertained by Paul this morning

Baby Girl goes home this afternoon.  We will miss watching her do her thing.  We've spent a fair amount of time just sitting in the living room with her and her toys.  I'm hoping for lots of future visits.  Baby Land is so snuggly and soft and sweet.  And sleep deprived.  ;-)

Whale Watching on Maui

People, if you read nothing else on this post, hear this message loud and clear:  Pacific Whale Foundation rocks.  If you want to go whale watching on Maui, go with them!

So, during the week leading up to our trip, as I lay dying in bed from a head cold, I spent a fair amount of time researching things we could do with the kids on Maui.  I had gone whale watching on our previous trip six years ago.  I loved it, mostly because of the water, the boat, the wind, and the waves.  I like boats.  I decided to see if the boys like boats as much as I do.  I made reservations for the six of us (Dave and Lynne included) to go whale watching on Monday morning at 8am.  I figured with the time change it would be no problem.  Ah, life.  It happens.

If you recall, it was Monday at around 3:30 am that Luke took his tumble down the tile stairs in our condo resulting in some major facial bruising and massive loss of sleep for this mom.  At 6 A.M. I called the Pacific Whale Foundation and explained our situation.  They happily changed our reservation to Wednesday morning at 9am.

Wednesday arrived and we headed to Ma'alaea Harbor to go on the very last whale watching cruise of the season with Pacific Whale Foundation.  We had heard earlier in the week that whales had moved on.  I was prepared for a complete dearth of whales, people.  At the same time, I won't lie, I was sitting on the bow of that boat praying my blessed guts out that we would see something awesome.  I couldn't help it.

A disclaimer:  I don't expect Jesus to answer these types of prayers.  He is not my genie in a bottle.  He is the Sovereign God of the Universe.  But I tell Him the deepest desires of my heart and acknowledge that sometimes they are selfish.  He gets it.  He gets me.  And He loves me.  And I never hold it against Him if He chooses something other than what I would choose.  I know He knows best.

Okay, having made that disclaimer, get ready for it.  About an hour into the cruise, we had spotted one whale quite a distance off.  The captain cruised slowly toward where we had seen the spout.  The law says that you must stay 100 meters away from these creatures, for their safety and yours.  While we waited for the whale to resurface, the naturalist on the microphone shared cool facts about Humpback Whales.  We enjoyed the sunshine.  And yes, I prayed.

Then it happened.  There was a HUGE splash to the side of the boat and we ALL saw this HUGE tail come up out of the water and crash down to the left.  It was NOT a tail slap.  It was a tail throw and if you ask me, it was WAY closer than 100 meters.  Every single person on board gasped or yelled in utter amazement and perhaps some fear, including the two naturalists, the research assistant and the captain.  The naturalist began to quickly explain this was a very uncommon thing to see.  It's called a peduncle throw and involves a fair amount of aggression on the whale's part.  It was awesome.  It was answer to prayer.  And I said thank you to Jesus.

Here are the pics along with a few more details.

A nice German gentleman took this picture.  And then we helped him pick a shirt for the 8 year old in his life by holding it up to our 8 year old.  Awesome.

 Pre-boarding picture.

On board!

Goofy.

Our less dramatic sighting

This is a picture of a peduncle throw...not the one we saw.  I didn't get a picture of that, but this is pretty much what we saw.  Big.  Splashy.  Lots of tail.

 I love this picture.

 Both boys got to help Laura, our naturalist throw the hydrophone into the water.  It was awesome.  We only heard very faint whale song live, but they had some recorded from earlier in the month that we were able to hear.

 The West Maui Mountains from the water.  Beautiful.

On the way back into the harbor, they did a Jr. Naturalist Program inside the cabin.  It was VERY cool and both boys enjoyed it.

Maui Family Dinner Out

Yes, I'm still catching up on the Maui posts.  Yes, we arrived home a week ago.  What can I say? Jet lag?  Regardless, here's a post about our dinner out as an extended family.

On Tuesday evening we enjoyed a wonderful dinner with Dave, Lynne, Krista and the boys.  The boys wore collared shirts and khaki shorts.  The tropics are a magical place, people.  We ate at Monkey Pod Kitchen, a great place to take kids.  It's plenty loud and they have a kids menu.  Lovely.

I don't have a large group picture, but I do have some pretty sweet shots of the boys with awesome people.  Enjoy!

 Handsome Bangsund Men on our lush front patio before leaving for dinner

 The boys love Grandpa!

So sweet!

Maui Ocean Center

After the awesome staff at Makena Surf brought cake and singing, our family of four headed up the road to the Maui Ocean Center.  We had purchased week long passes online for the price of one day's admission.  It was a pretty sweet deal that we knew the grandparents would appreciate later in the week.

Shortly after our arrival, we were approached by a woman named Wendy, a naturalist employed by the Maui Ocean Center.  She offered us the opportunity to take a behind the scenes tour for the bargain price of $10 a head.  With just eight other folks, we would be taken into the Employees Only lab and given a tour by one of the marine biologists that would include feeding the sea turtles and the hammerhead sharks.  My answer was, "Heck, YES!"

We had about forty five minutes before the tour started.  We spent that time enjoying exhibits.  There were so many cool tropical fish to see.  The boys were completely enthralled.  Some pics to prove it:

 Paul's favorite cat is named Toby.  It belongs to our friends.  He spotted this fish. It's a Toby, too.

Luke liked this sub.  This is an amazing shot of his shiner.  Good times.

When the time came for the tour, I was honestly a little unsure how this would go.  We met up with Wendy and the other tour participants at the pre-arranged bench.  The boys were a little tired and grumpy, so I was prepared to bail if necessary.

The tour started and we headed right for the lab.  My boys were UBER impressed with the small, slightly smelly marine biology lab.  Did anyone doubt?  Larisa, the marine biologist, talked us through how they grow the food for some of the animals.  It's like plankton, people.  The boys were enthralled.

 Larisa in the Lab

Then she showed us some of the coral they are growing.  Again, the eight and the six year old were WAY into it.  Around the corner she showed us a moon jelly which the boys were able to touch.  VERY cool.  She also showed them this other little creature thing, the name of which I can't recall.  The boys were totally attentive and interested in everything.  It didn't hurt that they were the only children on the tour, so they had no competition for touching things and getting the front row view.

 Larisa holds the Nameless Creature while Paul reaches out and touches it.

 Nameless Creature and Paul

Luke after touching the moon jelly...a little grossed out. ;-)

We then ventured outside where they have the baby sea turtle tanks that aren't for public viewing.  Oh.  My.  Word.  The cutest thing I've ever seen is a baby sea turtle splashing my eight year old in a way that seemed to be on purpose.  Adorable times a million.  We were able to spend about fifteen minutes with that brand of cute.  Larisa even fed them while we were there.  The boys were given lots of cool information about the turtles, all of which I completely missed because I was so busy taking pictures.

The next stop on the tour was the adult sea turtle exhibit where we were all able to toss in the cubes of homemade turtle food, along with a bunch of lettuce leaves.  CHOMP!

Cube of turtle Jello - veggies and algae in a gelatinous cube - YUM! 

Then we headed over to feed a bunch of fish parts to the hammerheads and rays.  MEGA CHOMP!  It was at this point that Paul answered one of Wendy's questions correctly, telling the entire group that the smallest shark in the world is the Dwarf Shark.  Thank you very much, Multnomah County Library System.  It was awesome.

We finished the tour in the underwater tunnel where Wendy gave us more information about the sharks and rays in this particular exhibit, including the important role of sharks in the ocean.  She then invited all of us to stick around for the public feeding of the sharks and rays by a diver in about thirty minutes.  The boys were TOTALLY interested in that.  We spent the next thirty minutes hanging out in the underwater tunnel and managed to get front row seats for the dive.

We posed this shot while we waited for the dive to start, but it's still super fun!

Front row seats for the dive!

Lo and behold!  The diver turned out to be Larisa!  She waved and said a special greeting to the boys from the tank.  Wendy was in the viewing area with her own microphone, asking Larisa questions and giving the audience, a group of probably 75 folks, the chance to do the same.

Larisa and the spotted ray, a favorite of everyone's.

At the end of the presentation, Wendy said that one child would get a prize for answering the following question correctly.  "What is the role of sharks in the ocean?"  Luke's hand shot up and Wendy made her way to him.  (She knew she had a ringer!)  Luke leaned into the microphone and explained that sharks are important because they get rid of diseased and dying fish in the ocean, keeping it clean.

People, I just about wept.  There are very few opportunities when this homeschooling mom gets to see her kids shine in public.  They shine every day in our home, but it's kinda special when I get to show them off a little bit.  Luke won his prize, a very cool shark identification card.  The presentation ended and we headed for the car.

For the record:  The $10 tour at the Maui Ocean Center is TOTALLY worth it, people!  They only give it on Tuesdays and Fridays, so plan ahead if you are going.  Ask for Wendy.  She rocks.  In conclusion, it was simply an awesome day.

Why Housekeepers at Makena Surf Rock

Maui was just too relaxing, so not much blogging happened.  I will make up for it now.  I will begin with the post about why the housekeepers at Makena Surf are so very awesome.

Each morning around 9am, the lovely and fabulous Franny would ring the doorbell of our condo and ask if we needed anything.  Fresh towels?  More toilet paper?  Anything?

On our second morning, she noticed that we had the same last name as the folks staying in G101 and asked if we were related.  I smiled and told her that we were all there to celebrate Grandpa's 65th birthday.  She immediately said that she and the other housekeepers (she called them her girls) wanted to get a cake and sing to him.  No joke.

And they did.  The following morning after a little bit of sneakiness on my part and Lynne's part, the housekeeping staff arrived with cake and song and kisses.  It was definitely awesome.

Here are a few pics to commemorate the awesome.

 I am standing between the fabulous Franny and the birthday boy.  So fun!

 Paul is eating cake for breakfast.  He likes Maui a lot.

 Paul got cake on his leg and the lanai.  He wanted to eat it anyway.  We said no.

Franny and me.  Aren't we lovely?