Cousin Fun in Salem

This last weekend we all got to have a little bit of fun with cousins.

Trout Creek Bible Camp hosted their first ever Father/Son weekend, 

Brent, Mitch and Bray got to go do that. Uncle Eric and Abram also attended. 

(that will be another post after I see what pictures Brent took)

Carleen was going to a woman's retreat/conference that weekend as well...

So I got to watch Elysia.

It was just August, Elysia and I for the weekend.

Knowing that I tried to plan some super fun things to keep the weekend moving fast.

That Friday I drove over to Portland early in the morning
(since the boys didn't have school).
 I took them to Brent and then headed to Carleen's house to get the run-down on Ely's routine.

Finally everyone took off to their respective places and we were left to our own adventures.

We headed into Tigard to drop off Cosmo at Jen's house, she lets me kennel him in her garage, since Carleen has his sister they just play and bark too much if no one is there... 

We hung out for a little bit with Breanna and Grandma.
We went out for some Chinese food.
 *The waitress could not stop talking about how cute she thought August was.
As he was pretending to pop out of an egg...
be on covert spy missions under the table...
and hog all of the sweet-n-sour chicken.
Yea, he's adorable.*

It was a nice slow paced meal where we got to talk and visit.
 Carleen hates Chinese food so this was a completely new experience for Elysia.
 She even called the fortune cookies "scone cookie". Haha, too cute.

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Saturday we got up early and made breakfast together.

I tried out a recipe we just got while in Idaho from Krystel...the German Pancakes (puff cakes).

Elysia and August were more than willing to help be mini chefs.

 The recipe calls for 6 eggs.
So they each got to crack 3.
Elysia helped August learn how to properly crack an egg.
 It was cute watching her be a little teacher.

The kids wanted to eat theirs with powdered sugar and honey.
I used raspberries and honey

After breakfast we had to head back to Tigard to feed Cosmo his breakfast and take him for a mini walk. Upon arriving we found that my mom had a pretty bad headache,
so we took Tyler with us on our adventures. 

First we went to the Salvation Army Kroc Center in Salem.

 It is where August had his birthday party in October.

 We have been meaning to go back...

The kids had a blast.

 I was pretty excited too.

 Elysia and Tyler did not come to Aug's birthday so this was their first time being there.

(I gave the water proof camera to my boys to take to camp.)
So I only snapped a few things on my phone...

 Some videos, which were harder to take with my phone!

We then headed to a nice shady park...but I couldn't find one. 

So we settled for a nice shady parking lot.

We ate the delicious lunch we had made and had some good 4, 7, and 13 year old conversations.

After lunch we headed to Young at Art to get our creative on...

Elysia and Tyler took the quick tour and went right to planning out their projects. 

Tyler asked to buy one of the $5 canvas to paint a picture.

He wanted to paint something from Halo (his video game). 

After telling him no to several scary guys and weapons he asked if he can draw an artificial intelligence character from the game Cortana? 

He starts telling me more about her and I said fine. 

He showed me some pictures on his phone and I was like WHAT!

Here is what Cortana looks like

Yup! She's naked folks...

Ugh. I tried to help him find a picture that was not as bad. I mean there are little kids walking around this place...

While Tyler worked on that...

Elysia and August made a plethora of different things.

 August started out where he left off last time, making play dough balls to roll down this play dough slide...

 Elysia started off by making a guitar.

 It never takes long before August turns to body paints...this time he had a partner in crime.

 I helped August assemble a dinosaur. He told me where everything should go. We ended up making him a feathered hat too!

So  three hours later he finished his picture.

Not pictured were the paintings, necklace, kitty mask, and Easter basket Elysia made...

After that we were pretty tired and it was around super time.
We dropped Tyler off and headed back out to Newberg.
The kids didn't quite make it home without falling asleep!

 I promised Elysia Burgerville, so we picked that up for dinner along with
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2.
We were going to sleep out on the trampoline and watch the movie outside, but it was way too cold.
We ended up eating dinner INSIDE. The kids then took a BIG bath (as August calls it)...

  ...while I made popcorn.
Then they snuggled down and watched the movie while I did homework.
Sunday we just loafed around outside. The kids played and I did more homework until everyone returned from their camps. Then we drove the 3 hours home!