Halloween Pics!

Don't have time to write much, but wanted to post some Halloween pics. Enjoy!

Lightning McQueen and Mater Side View

Lightning McQueen and Mater Front View

I did take Austin out Trick-or-Treat'ing which he did fairly well at. He wouldn't say Trick or Treat, but he always said Thank you when prompted. Everyone loved his costume. Other kids would stop and stare as Lightning McQueen went by. We had lots of fun!

Portland Zoo

At the end of September Jason had his 10 year High School Reunion. We decided that we would attend, and we ultimately had an alright time, but my favorite part of the weekend had nothing to do with the reunion at all. To facilitate the weekend trip to Longview, Jason took that Friday off and we headed down to his parents house Thursday night after he got off work. Reunion activities didn’t start until Friday night, so we decided to get up early on Friday and take the boys down to the Portland Zoo. After all, Jason’s parents were both at work and his siblings were off at school so we’d have been hanging out at their house alone all day anyway.

So off we trooped to the zoo. It was a typical Pacific Northwest day weather wise – overcast and slightly drizzling. This was actually our second trip to the Portland Zoo and we love it because of their Sea Lion exhibit. You ever notice how each zoo seems to have their own specialty exhibit? To me the Seattle Zoo’s Bear and Otter exhibit can’t be beat. Tacoma is definitely the Beluga Whale. Salt Lake has a relatively new and terrific Elephant exhibit. You just have to go to them all to see the different animals and habitats. At any rate, Portland excels with their Sea Lions which are just enormous. They swim laps around their habitat and always swim right in front of the huge underwater glass. You can see Austin (red hood) standing in front of one of the sea lions as it passes.

We also met a very nice Sea Otter family while we were there.

Here's Sea Otter Mom

Sea Otter Austin

And Sea Otter Lucas

Sea Otter Dad was taking the pics and for whatever reason we didn’t think to switch places and get a picture of him so I’ll throw in one of him and Austin by the bears at the front gate.

And just to wrap things up, later that weekend, Jason’s brother, James, brought several pumpkins he’d received free of charge to his parents house. We brought 2 of the smaller ones home, but there was one gigantic pumpkin that was for Grandma Crawford’s Kindergarten classroom. It was so big we just had to get some pics of Luke standing by it. Luke is 9 ½ months old in this picture and just a head taller than this 70 pound behemoth. Thanks for the pumpkins James!

Ward Campout 2007

We participated in our Ward Campout in August of this year held at Ensign Ranch. It’s a church owned facility located in or around Cle Elum, WA which is only about an hour drive from our home. I know it’s been a couple months since then, but we just got our pics developed so I thought I’d share. I swear we’re the only family in the civilized world without a digital camera!

Jason took Friday off so we could head up early. That’s because 2 years ago, while members of the Renton Stake Tiffany Park Ward, we also went to Ensign Ranch for the Ward Campout. Austin was less than a year old at that time, my how the time flies. At any rate, that year we didn’t leave until after Jason got home from work. We realized we’d made a critical mistake about halfway through setting up our tent in the dark. Then we relaxed by sitting in camp chairs around the cooler inside the tent eating tuna fish sandwiches by the romantic glow of our flashlights, once we found them that is. I remember that what Austin loved most about that trip was being inside the tent crawling around on the air mattress. He thought that was so neat and loved it whenever Jason or I would bounce him on it.

Austin’s been camping a couple times since, but this trip was Luke’s first adventure into the great outdoors. Not surprisingly, he too loved being in the tent crawling around on the air mattress. Only this time Jason and I weren’t the ones doing the bouncing. Austin was bouncing enough for all of us, and Luke couldn’t get enough of it. Hard to tell him to stop jumping when they’re both just cackling with laughter.

On Saturday we signed up to take the paddleboat out on the lake. We all got our life jackets on and waited our turn. Austin was scared at first to get in, so we were going to leave him with some ward members on the shore. As soon as we started pulling away he realized he’d rather be in the boat with us than on the shore without us. So we went back and picked him up and off we went. It was quite windy that day and the paddleboat had a canopy on it so we simply got ourselves out into the middle of the lake and let the wind push us for a while. After about 15 minutes we decided to head back and quickly realized the mistake we’d made. Remember the wind and the canopy that had been so great to push us down the lake? Now we were fighting against that wind trying to make our way back. And we had nothing but Mom and Dad leg power to do it with, and I was holding Luke on my lap the whole time. We quickly remembered how old and out of shape we are. We eventually made it back to shore, docked the boat, and collapsed to the ground! Austin didn’t know what was wrong, he wasn’t tired at all.

Our favorite adventure though was when Jason and Austin went exploring and found their way down to a river that runs through the ranch. We sat out there by the side of the river for hours while Austin threw rocks, sand, grass, and whatever he could get his hands on into the water. We all had our feet in the water just cooling off and relaxing. The weather was amazing by Washington standards and we all had a great time. I guess we may have more camping adventures in our future.

He told me so.

“Mom, Mom come here quick. You gotta check this out!”

“What is it Austin?”

“It’s Mack, he’s under the bed. It’s Mack Mom, it’s Mack.”

Instantly my heart sank in despair. He wasn’t supposed to find it. His birthday’s not for another month and a half. Jason told me he’d find it. I knew better than that and insisted that I could keep it hidden until the big day.

So it was that two days ago, yep count’em two days, I pulled out Mack the truck, which we’d purchased a couple weeks ago, and which had up until this time been hiding in the trunk of our car, and began to assemble him there on our living room floor, after Austin had gone to bed of course, so it’d be ready for its big debut on Nov. 2nd. I just wanted to make sure it was all there and that it was all put together so we didn’t have to try assembling it when Austin would immediately want to play with it. At least that’s what I told myself. Okay, so maybe there was a small part of me that was excited, no, REALLY EXCITED, to play with it first. But what’s the harm in that? Isn’t that half the fun of having kids anyway is getting to play with all their cool toys that you buy to play with, I mean for them to play with? And so I felt completely justified in my actions. Besides, I had the perfect hiding place for Mack. There’s so much stuff under our bed even if he did look under there, there’s no way he’d find him.

Nevertheless this afternoon, after taking a nap on our bed, Austin woke up and began playing with his toys that had taken a nap with him. Wouldn’t you know it, one of them fell off the bed. He proceeded to climb down onto the floor and start snooping around looking for it. And then, well you know the rest.

I had to call Jason at work and go through the usual routine.

“I’m stupid, you’re smart. I was wrong, you were right. You’re the best, I’m the worst. You’re very good-looking, I’m not attractive.”

Our first blog.

This blog is for Myr. She made us do this. We didn't want to, but Myr said we had to. So here I am creating the first blog posting for The Crawford Crew. I just started playing around and clicking on things and apparently found how to upload an image. So I chose the boys' picture which we had taken quite some time ago (Luke is 6 weeks old and Austin is a couple months past 2 years in this pic). Luke's now 8 months old and Austin's set to turn 3 on Nov. 2nd, just ask him. He'll also tell you everything he's going to get for his birthday too. He's now started asking for things for every holiday. Right now he's working on his Halloween list.

So all the blogs I see from all my friends have funny stories or neat things that happen to them. I feel like I have to dredge up something of that sort to post here. You can't just post for the sake of posting. You have to say something or relate something, right?

So let's see. Last night as Austin and I were enjoying the opening of the 2007 college football season together, he was playing with his cars and books which were scattered all over the living room. As he was running around he tripped over something and banged his knee on one of his cars. Mom was busy, so Dad got to play the role of caretaker as he came over with his blanket in one hand and snuggled up to me.

"Dad I fell and hurt my knee," he proceeded to tell me.

"I'm sorry," I replied.

"Dad, you didn't have anything to do with it!" Austin heatedly replied.

So I simply proceeded to kiss it better and not apologize for what I had nothing to do with, and we sat and watched more football together. It was a good father son bonding moment, only made possible because Mom was busy.

Alright, that's my first foray into the world of posting. Perhaps there'll be more ventures later, but given my past performance in journal keeping and responding to emails, perhaps there won't be. Myr, you just let me know when it's time to post again. Family pics coming soon so perhaps another post is just around the corner.