More Outside Pictures

Venti's New Location

Those of you familiar with Salem might have had the chance to dine at Venti's Cafe. Eric has lunch at Venti's almost every day that he stays downtown - and the Compton/Venti family friendship started there when Eric and Conrad Venti became friends standing in line at Venti's for lunch everyday :) Conrad's Uncle Dino owns the restaurant and they make the best teriyaki chicken bowls. Venti's Cafe opened their new location this Monday so we met the Venti Fam for our first Venti's meal at the new restaurant. Conrad and Kari have the cutest 5 month old twins - Mila and Nolan. And, with the four of us and our four kids we never would have fit in Venti's tiny previous location!

3rd of July!

Last night, we visited the Oregon Gardens in Silverton for their 4th of July event with our friends the Richters - Paul, Bethany, Sydney, Noah and Abraham. We have been blessed by their family's friendship and it was a great chance for us to visit and for the kids to play! Noah and Marshall are just a few months a part in age, and Eliza and Abraham are just 2 months apart. Sydney is almost 5 and does a great job of being a big sister to both Noah and Marshall. The parents and the kids all had such a great time. The kids loved the children's area with a pirate ship bounce house/slide and balloon animals. And, everyone enjoyed eating a picnic dinner in the grass. We left before the fireworks got started - by 10:00 all 5 of the kids were tired, but Marshall is hoping to catch a few fireworks tonight here in Salem!

Hot Weather!!

Summer is finally here! Our temperatures hit 100 degrees here in Salem yesterday and the kids were so excited to get out and play in the water. We set up a swimming pool in the backyard and brought Marshall's slide outside and set it up to land in the water. Next door, our friends the Pools (fitting last name for all of our water fun!) also had a pool set up. Their son, Etai, is just 2 months older than Marshall and they are great friends. We spent the day with Marshall and Etai going back and forth between our yards playing in sprinklers and swimming pools and eating lots of snacks. Eliza loved the water too and tried hard to keep up with the boys, a difficult feat when she can only crawl these days. She had a lot of fun in the pool though. She really wanted to swim by herself- you'll see in one of the pictures she is practically crawling out of her float and she kept trying to crawl into the pool on her own. She loved sticking her face under the water too - we couldn't believe how much she loved having a wet face. We can tell that both of the kids will have a great time at swim lessons in a few weeks. Marshall and Eliza were both exhausted by the end of the day, but Marshall woke up ready to head out again today!

Bathtime

I have posted so many pictures of Eliza in the bath - they are some of my favorite pictures of her. But, this one is just to show why she really needs to move to the real bathtub and out of the kitchen sink. She has gotten pretty comfortable with bathtime - lounging sideways with her feet hanging over the edge of the bathtub!

Guitar Hero

For those of you not familiar with the world of Playstation 3 or XBOX 360, Guitar Hero is a video game using controllers that look like guitars. And, you play songs on your guitar - it is a lot more fun than it might sound! Marshall is obsessed with guitars and loved this game when it saw it at a friend's house last weekend. We are now the proud owners of a Guitar Hero game and two guitar controllers. Eric and Marshall (okay, and me too) have been having lots of fun playing guitar! Here are a couple of pictures of the boys playing their game!

Our Picnic

For weeks, Marshall has been asking everyday if we can have a picnic in the backyard. Now that the weather is nice we can start eating lunch outside, and Marshall loves it. Here are a couple of pictures from today's picnic. And, one of Marshall standing by his new pear tree. He calls it his peaches and pears tree and waters it with his own watering can almost everyday!