A Typical Family Home Evening at the Bachmans

Oregon Trip!

Being the lucky duckies that we are, we got to go on a fun family trip to Oregon!  This trip was sponsored by Rob’s work (E&Y) because he has a client in Lake Oswego and we were more than happy to tag along.  In past trips we have always flown but now that are children are no longer free babes on board we decided to make the long haul by car.  We ditched Caleb with Nani and off we went!  Thanks Nani for watching the chunk-a-lunk.  I’m pretty sure him being the only child with his favorite Nani who spoils him silly was a major vacay for him too.

We began our drive around 7 hoping the boys would sleep most of the way to our pit stop in Meridian and we were not disappointed.  We stayed the night in a lovely Marriott, complete with pool, breakfast, elevator rides and hallway raceways for little boys!  Isaac and Zekie made the most of their hotel experience by insisting on pushing all elevator buttons and opening the doors with the special keys.  Isaac also made himself feel right at home and untwisted the tops off of the lamps upon arrival.  That is his latest obsession: lamp screw tops.  You can see in the above picture his prize possessions.  The picture of Zekie is the “after” picture of complete road traveling exhaustion.  I told him this was going to be THE longest car ride of his life and when we eventually got there he confirmed “You were right Mama.”  Luckily 2 separate DVD players for the boys, 2 mp3 players for the parents, LOADS of candy and snacks and a token traveling ABC game or two and we survived the 13 hour long journey to Portland.

Our first day there Rob went off to work and we went off to Tillamook to see Auntie Ev & Ann.  They live at the top of a beautiful countryside and it was so grand to see all of the green tree and rolling hills.  Not to mention…IT’S SPRING in Oregon!  Not here in Utah.  Everything still brown and dead…but in Oregon…it’s Spring.  Cute baby cow, pretty pink blossoms, purple rhody bushes all in bloom.  Ahhhh.  Ev took us on a lovely stroll around the neighborhood and being the good auntie that she is, even hauled Zekie around in a wagon.  Then we let the boys be boys and climb up on the tractor and climb some dirt hills.  Next we ate a hearty lunch of delish quiche and off we went to the beach.Mighty Squeaks did lots of shoveling and rock collecting for our incredible castle and moat. Auntie Ev was a glorious hostess and loving auntie and help the boys with our splendid caste and doted on them continually.What’s gonna work?  Team work!  Notice the seagull in the background.  Quick side story: Isaac saw a seagull in the Idaho parking lot and exclaimed “Yook! A flamingo!”  He was doing his best to make our trip as exotic as possible.Zekie LOVED the beach!  He had so much fun running away from the tide. Twas a most joyous occasion for my Zekes.A moment caught in time: Zekes squishing his toes in the sand.

I asked Ev if she would roll Isaac’s pants up so he could run from the waves with Zekie.  Next thing I knew he was off and running pant-less.  I raised an eyebrow at Ev.  She rebutted “I tried rolling up his pants and they were only 6 inches off the ground!”  The boys had soo much fun unless Isaac’s grand finale face plant into the sand.  Funny thing is, not a tear was shed.  We took off his sopping coat, he spit out some sand, gave a quick shiver, and ran back for more.  Ev knew that it was just a matter of second before he would turn into a Squeaksicle and called it.  We stripped them down, wrapped them in blankets and headed back for a warm bath.To complete our day at Tillamook I felt it was a must to take my boys to the Tillamook Cheese Factory.  My boys live off of Costco Tillamook cheese and I thought that they’d enjoy seeing where and how it’s made.  They weren’t so convinced until I told them that their two favorite things would be there.  Ice cream & Candy.It was an absolutely wonderful day at the beach.  Thank you Auntie Ev…we love you and will be back soon!

Best Friends

To balance out the evil song with a good song.

An Evil Love

Via Erica's request, here's Our Song :). Gotta love Phineas and Ferb!

Happy Valentine’s Day

Happy Valentine’s day from the Bachman Brothers! Isaac just saw this picture and said “That is a picture of my best friend Baby.” And what a lovable best friend Baby he is to everyone and everything! Caleb is just oozing affection most of the day. Some of his favorite things he loves to give big hugs and kisses to include his family, his binky/blanket, and yesterday my necklace got at least 5 kisses. He likes to announce what he has kissed after he’s done it and say for example “Mama kiss.” or perhaps “candy kiss”. I’m grateful for my boys who pound on each other daily, but almost always are willing to kiss and make up immediately afterwards. Here’s me with my Sweetheart posing for our orthodontists’ advertising campaigns :) I gave Rob some Mother’s Circus Cookies (one of his favs)…I figured, pink and white with sprinkles? Clearly Valentiny. Rob gave me LOTS of extra help with the kiddos and a long backrub. We’re real romantics around here. Don’t even bother completing :) On Saturday we had a spicy Valentine’s date at a new Mexican restaurant “Tios” up the street in our neighborhood. We had a good experience with the food, pricing “Valentine’s special”, ambiance, and service. We asked each other about our hopes and dreams which inevitably ends up as a convo about when #4 fits in the plan. We tried to branch out a little more this time and talked about all the exotic travel we’ll do when we’re retired empty nesters. They offered us Martinelli’s after our meal and so we made a toast to many more sweet Valentine’s days to us.To cap off our Valentine’s experience “the special” included a bouquet of flowers. Our waitress was supposed to bring them out to me but I saw where the bucket full of bouquets was and I asked he if I could pick out my own. She consented and then surprised me by saying that actually there was an even cuter bouquet in the back…she brought them out and indeed they were the winners. A quick Valentine shout out: Thank you Rob for being such a wonderful husband and father. I love you more everyday! and PS Thanks to Diana for coming up with the great idea for a babysitting swap/swap. I'm definitely game when you want to swap again!

Christmas Eve and Morn.

On Christmas Eve we had a fun shig dig up in Farmington with the Bachman side of the fam. We had a delicious ham dinner and ate to our heart's content. Then we opened presents and socialized as always. We always have fun watching the cousins crazily running around the house causing mischief. Some highlights were meeting Bryson's awesome girlfriend Destiny, having a heart attack the several times Peyton knocked over the heavy wood chair on the floor, convincing one kid that it was OK to share his present and the other kid that we need to let the first kid have some time to play with his present by his self for a while and oohing and aahing at the glorious calendar Kimi made for Diane once again. All in all another fun evening with the Bachman clan

So Christmas clearly isn't all about the presents, but c'mon...when you've got three little boys it pretty much is. Zekie very consistently claimed that all he wanted for Christmas was candy and Thomas toys. Luckily an awesome friend from the ward hooked me up with a great deal on all of her son's old Thomas toys he didn't play with anymore. They were a BIG hit and Zekie and the other boys played with them for hours and hours. I even asked Isaac was his favorite toy was for Christmas and he said "Zekie's trains!"

Isaac's is always looking to modify things just a little to make them better. For example dunking chicken nuggets into juice, rearranging the gymnastic toys in his class, and clearly wedging PlayFoam onto his screwdriver to create a whirling swirling foam helicopter. The possibilities are endless.

Caleb now officially owns his very own car. Plasma car that is. Really we just call it the Wiggle car and wiggle it does. The best part is I can even ride it and we have thoroughly enjoyed zooming around the kitchen together. You can't really tell from this picture but Caleb is very good at making the ride a thrilling experience was a very passionate...Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrmmmmmmm!

The Salt Mine

While we were in Austria we stopped by the Salt Mine. It was fun to get all dressed up in our mining jumpsuit and go down into the depths of the earth to learn about the whole salt mining process.

These clearly are pictures of pictures because I was feeling too cheap to buy them. I snapped them just in time before the lady selling them started yelling loud scary things in German at me. Stupid American tourist. They had these awesome wood slides that the miners used to quickly go down into the mine. They were easily the best part of the tour. It was funny because all the other groups slid quietly down them but we of course couldn't help ourselves from hooting and hollaring!

The fun little train ride into the mine. Good thing we we're all friends, with the coziness of it all. Another highlight of the mine excursion was floating across the boat along the top of the salt water as we saw a wicked lazer light show on the ceiling. Definitely reccomend it.