Not Such a Baby anymore.

While on vacation this weekend, we spent some time at a really nice swimming pool. The weather didn't cooperate, but the pool was beautiful. It has a large pool with a slide for the swimmers and a huge wading pool with a fountain for the littles.

The Boy Scout, D, and Girlfriend swam until they'd had all they could take. Girlfriend conquered the slide, now that she is swimming so well.

Sunshine and The Bambino were super happy in the wading pool. I'll share some great pictures of all the wet Ducklings later.

The Sprout hung out with The Scoutmaster and me. Before long, he was feeling quite confident and comfortable in the new surroundings and he began toddling around exploring. He is at such a fun age right now. He's so much fun to watch. Everything delights him and he loves to entertain us. We've always loved the 15 month stage.





It's all so bittersweet, watching the baby grow up. We love every new, joyful thing he does, but we know it will pass all too quickly.

We are all, here at the House of Coast, hopelessly smitten with this little man.

Summer!

Summer has swung into high gear here at the House of Coast!

I just downloaded a bunch of great pictures from my camera and got them backed up, but it will take me a few days to get some edited for sharing. Lots of fun stuff!

We were away for the weekend and had a wonderful time relaxing as a family. None of us wanted to come home. But good things awaited here, too.

Today we had swimming and The Boy Scout started Jr. Sailing School out at the lake and we have a little girlie friend over for all day. The energy level is running very high - the kids' not mine! And we are enjoying the sunny, windy coast day.

In Central Oregon over the weekend, my sweet girlies found these wild irises and buttercups way out in the woods and brought me a few as a gift. I hated to throw them out when we left to come home, but knew they wouldn't survive the trip. So I took a picture.


Back soon with more!

Good Morning!

Just popping in to say that the S OR Coast has not fallen off into the ocean.

We had a fabulous, busy weekend of All Star Baseball games and Father's Day BBQ.

Summer swimming started on Monday and has caused me to have to shift into a different gear in order to get school and chores and cooking and cleaning and playing all to fit together gracefully into each day. I think the investment of extra energy this week is paying off, though. I can feel a nice summer groove starting to form, which was my goal for this week. Hopefully, I can get everyone into a routine that will work for the next eight weeks, at least!

Oh, and we finally got a sunny day yesterday after weeks and weeks and weeks of gloom and rain and cold. Hallelujah!! It was such a treat to be outside and to be WARM. Saturday is the first day of summer. I can finally start to see it from here.

(For those of you with actual summer, our high yesterday was something like 65.)

(Oops, I just checked and the official high for yesterday was 59. It just FELT like 65... Ah, summer on the Oregon Coast.)

Food Blog?

It seems like all I blog about is food lately. Hope you don't mind!

Thanks to Tami's inspiration, we combined the fresh, local strawberries with the homemade granola and some vanilla yogurt. It was a breakfast to remember!


The older kids seized the opportunity to work on the baby's sign language skills. I think he's mastered "more, please."

This afternoon, we picked up our first box of produce from The Farm. Everyone was very excited to see what was in it!

Because of the cool, wet Spring, this first box was pretty light. It had two kinds of lettuce, spinach, radishes, bok choy and some organic strawberry preserves.

I wondered how we'd do with the radishes and bok choy.

I need not have worried.

They ate the radishes with joy - even the tops!

And then they discovered the Bok Choi. (Which is apparently some kind of Chinese cabbage.)


I turned my back for a moment and when I looked back, there was this:

Now they're sneaking off with handfuls of lettuce and mouthfuls of spinach when they are supposed to be cleaning up the house.

I guess we won't have too much trouble using up the produce in the boxes this summer! It's all so fresh and tasty. This is truly veggies at their best.

Drop by for a salad, if you're in the neighborhood!

But don't count on getting any bok choi.

It feels like the House of Coast has been invaded by rabbits! Send pork chops, stat!

A Taste of Summer

Yesterday, my sweet mother spotted some fresh, local strawberries at the farmers' market downtown. She knows how we treasure them, so she brought us a flat! Whoo-hoo!

The Ducklings have been eating them and I stemmed a bunch and put them in the fridge yesterday. I'm trying to decide whether to make jam. We are almost out of strawberry jam from last year, but these are so yummy, I want to eat them all fresh!

I' m sure I'll end up doing some jam, but this morning, I mashed some and served them over whole wheat pancakes. Since we had some Cool Whip left over from strawberry short cake a few days ago, I even added a dollop to make it extra special.

I think the Ducklings approved. They all wanted their picture taken with their plate of pancakes.





By the way, can you spot the "rookie mistake" in this photo of The Sprout?

Ahhhhh.... Summer!

Chimichanga Party!

This afternoon, a dream came to fruition. I finally got to use my HUGE new kitchen for a cooking party!

Two dear, beautiful, generous, talented, lovely friends of mine brought their offspring (five boys, one girl, ages 3 to 11) to our home to make a triple batch of chimichangas.

It was great fun!

After the moms got the ingredients prepared, we rallied the 12 children together in the kitchen and began an amazing assembly line that looked something like this:


My sweet friend was right in the middle of it! We moms took on the job of folding all the chimi's as fast as the children would assemble them. Whew!

A good time was had by all...

Some of the children got down right silly.

But the moms remained serious and dignified at all times.

In the end, we had about 140 delicious, tortilla-wrapped packages for the freezer!


Comically, I'd never eaten a chimichanga before today. My two friends, however, love them and I trust completely in their good taste.

After the party was over and the dust had settled, the Ducklings and I baked and ate some chimichagas for dinner. I. am. in. love. with chimichangas! Yum!

Thank you, sweet friends! We need to do this again soon!

Helllooo??

I'm scrolling through my blog list and I think,

"Oh, someone else blogged about chores today. I wonder if it was in response to what I wrote today about our chores."

Then I realize that I'm looking at the list of posts for my own blog.

Ahem...