We LOVE the 80's

This weekend we celebrated my Aunt Annette's 80th Birthday. In case any of my few followers are unaware, Annette is the oldest of my mom's siblings and her only sister.
This picture was from Annette and Walt's honeymoon. I'd call it a classic.

Part 1 of the celebration was Saturday afternoon at my parent's house. After spending 2 hours in the car to get there courtesy of construction on the bridge, we finally arrived. And speaking of arrivals, baby Maiya arrived 3 weeks ago making my cousin Brian a grandpa. The sun also made a rare appearance on Saturday.

Denise and mom. Denise came out from Michigan for the occasion.

Who's that? Oh, it's miss Siena.

Yaya had some sort of garbage mishap...

Jason (Denise's son) and Deb. Deb and Lucinda came up from California for the 80th celebration.

My cousin Betty and her significant other Jay.

There's the birthday girl!

Yaya and her 2 favorite kids. Oh, and the 2 favorite kids had their share of sugar at this celebration.

From left, Roger, Walt, and Dad. Roger is my cousin Judy's husband. Due to a meniscus repair on her knee Judy couldn't make it down from Orcas Island where they live. It was good to see Roger though.

Siena certainly at home at Yaya's. She has her room (Papa Ron's library) and all of her special toys that reside at Yaya's.

Who's the Bubba!

Fast forward to Sunday morning. After getting home at around 9, and me having a second dinner (boo to eating dinner at 4 PM), we hopped into bed only to hop back out of bed the next morning and head down the highway to Cascade Locks. This is the part of the birthday celebration that Annette didn't know about ahead of time. Lucinda and Denise told her last night that they'd be taking her to breakfast. What they didn't mention was that breakfast would be here:

Speaking of the surprised birthday girl...

And making their fashionably late entrance...

Big hugs for Yaya from the kids. It had been such a long time since they all saw each other after all.

You'll notice the plethora of rain coats. Yup, after one day of sun our usual rain came back. In a bit of a post group photo mishap, Deb was the one left red handed...

We had brunch on the Sternwheeler. It was very good - eggs benedict, pastries, fruit, bacon...and dessert. Yummy!

Not only was Annette not expecting this boat breakfast, I don't think she was expecting this many family members to come. From left: Walt, Annette, Leonard (mom's brother), Denise (the sleeve of purple), Jason (Denise's son), and Deb.

More of the breakfast gang...from left: Lucinda, Brian, Debbie, Lucie, and Ron (mom's brother).

We actually took up 2 tables there were so many of us!

Mason and Siena got to go into the captain's cabin and steer the ship! That was a HUGE treat for them! They were so excited.

The captain also let each of the kids toot the horn.

See, there really is a wheel!

Did I mention the rain was back today? Soggy Mason, not that he minded one bit.

We may be at brunch, but that's no reason to not bring along some strawberry powder to make strawberry milk!

I tried and tried to get a decent picture of Walt and Annette on the boat. This was the best I could do. It was cloudy and rainy, but there were still some impressive sites: the Bridge of the Gods.

And 2 wet kids.

Some ladies of the ship - Deb, Denise, mom , Annette, me, and Lucinda.

We passed many of these fishing areas where natives are still fishing in the Colombia. Most of these look about ready to collapse under an adult's weight. However, it seems that there is plenty of fish catching still going on.

Niece and Auntie - Denise and Jan.

These kids were all over the Sternwheeler.

Denise is so good with the kids. Here she is with Mason.

80th Birthday M&M's with Annette's picture on them. Awesome! I'm not so sure it's right for me to eat them though.

And the strawberry milk queen!

Skipper Mason!

The birthday buddies!

Siena through a port hole. Luis was convinced I was going to lose the camera getting this shot.

Back home, I figured if I waited for the rain to stop, I would never get the weeds pulled so I got to work. Here's proof of my commitment to improving the world by eradicating unwanted foliage.

We all got cleaned up after weeding. Mason did his own hair which he called "rock star". Rock on son, rock on.

Memorial Day Weeds

VIDEO IS FIXED!! VIDEO IS FIXED!!

Thanks to my son the slave-driver, a lot of weeds got pulled this weekend. It's hard to center a blog around weed pulling, however, so I won't.

We had a nice dinner last night at Yaya and Papa Ron's. Today Luis and I went to see Sex and the City 2 which I LOVED! Goes to show the critics are wrong. They just don't get it.

In lieu of anything exciting to post this weekend, here's Siena's ballet from last Sunday (Siena is 4th from left and the last little girl to run across the stage):

Big Birthday Big Dance Big Blog

This is officially blog #100! See mom, see dad, I can follow through with something!

Last weekend was crazy busy. I'm not sure why, but it seems that we have 3 boring weekends a month and one insanely busy one. Crazy was this weekend.

Saturday morning started with shuffling Seina off to her dance lesson for their last practice before their big recital on Sunday. At 10:30 was Mason's BIG 6th birthday party at JJ Jump! Papa Ron managed to make it bright and early (for him) to JJ Jump for the party and found the most comfortable seat in the house.

This is how you tire out a kid. Those little blurs are Jocelyn, Berren, Mason, and Siena.
Papa Ron must have stood up at some point because Jay B found the comfy chair too.

The Grandmas!

Tomas was on board for this crazy weekend too. I'm sure he didn't imagine he'd be spending time at JJ Jump or a dance recital when he booked his ticket to the USA.

I think Siena was having a good time even if she did have to run there straight from dance.

Our friends Sharon and Giada. I think this was Giada's first JJ Jumping experience.

Mason and Giada. I think Giada was a little worn out at this point. Mason was having a wonderful time.

After jumping, Mason got to go up to try to grab tickets from the big air thing. He got 7 little toys as prizes.

Dan and Berren watching Mason pulling tickets.

The kids enjoyed some pizza.

Gloria, Yaya, Jay B., and Chandra holding baby Rory.

Luis and Mandy have some pizza.

Cake time. That's Mason's motorcycle cake. Do you see the motorcycle? Neither do we. Somehow motorcycle became Scooby Doo. Mason certainly didn't care though and the tres leches cake was amazing as always.

Mason loved all of his presents. He's played with all of them continually since getting them home. We have had to set a few ground rules for the squirt guns though...

A big birthday hug from baby Tristyn!

Kids - Berren, Mason, Ellia, Siena, Jocelyn, and Giada. Not sure what Siena is snarling about...

This was Mason's present from Yaya and Papa Ron - a keyboard just like the one he has at school. He and Seina both love it. We got Mason a new bike for his birthday but due to a bent front end, it's still a bit of a work in progress (grrrrrr). Hopefully we'll have a boy on 2 wheels soon though.

Later Saturday, Yaya watched Mason and Siena while Papa Ron, Tomas, Luis and I took Tomas to dinner at our favorite haunt Rogue. We introduced Tomas to some local microbrew and tasty food. After dinner we went to Bartini's to have some crazy flavored martini's. We had a great time and hopefully showed Tomas another side of Portland life.

Sunday was another big day for the Cruz household. It was Siena's first ever dance recital. Unfortunately she started off the day feeling a little under the weather but she's a trooper and the show must be on.

Here she is getting her glitter applied.

Here's Siena backstage all decked out in her Sunday church-lady themed tap outfit.

Hopefully this works - it's my first attempt at embedding a video. As of this moment, we only have the tap song uploaded but I'll add the ballet one too as soon as it's uploaded. These things take time folks.

Less there be any confusion, Siena is the 5th little girl from the left. She's also the one that loses her glove at the end and responds in classic Siena fashion.

After the show, big brother Mason gave his little sister some congratulatory flowers. She was thrilled!

She did a WONDERFUL job in her first performance and we were so proud.

After the big show, we all went out to dinner at Gustavs. It was a hectic but fun weekend.

Meeting a Swede and Pulling Some Weeds

Last weekend we went up to my parent's house to meet Tomas, our visiting relative relative from Sweden. Tomas' grandfather and my great grandfather were brother's. I have no idea what that is in terms of second cousins, etc. but we've been Facebook friends for a while now and it was great to finally meet him.

A lot of the family came out for dinner, to celebrate Mother's day, and to meet Tomas. Here's my cousin Heidi and Aunt Joanne.
This is Luis, Dan, and Tomas on the left. Amazingly, in addition to speaking Swedish and English, he spoke Spanish with Luis and German with Joanne and Doug.
My dad's cousin David (see Roslyn blogs) and his wife Anne came out from Walla Walla to meet Tomas. Here's (from left) Anne, Mary Lou, and mom. Poor mom has the remains of a black eye courtesy of a fight with her exercise bike while painting a chair in the garage.

Tomas, my dad, and David check out some of the family records and documents Tomas brought from Sweden.

The evening started out nice. Then as NW weather is want to do, the clouds and rain came. The girls, Ellia and Siena, enjoy the outdoors while its still nice. Ellia might be closer to Mason in age but those little girls sure have a good time playing together.

Me and auntie Jo. Do we look like a couple of Scandanavians or what.

Group photo. Many thanks to auntie Mary Lou for sharing her pictures with me after I forgot to stick in my memory card. All the good pictures are her's. Okay, here's my attempt at labeling.

Back row from left: Dan (cousin Heidi's husband), Mary Lou, David Bullock (dad's cousin), mom, dad, Tomas, David Bullock (dad's cousin), Anne (David's wife), Jay B with daughter Jocelyn on shoulders, me, Siena, Joanne, Uncle Doug

Front row from left: Uncle Bruce, Baby Rory (Jay B and Chandra's), Heidi w/ son Berren on lap, Ellia, Chandra, Luis, Mason, Amanda, and Travis.

Tomas brought over a beer brewed in our family's hometown of Mariestads. I enjoyed it Friday night after another hard work week. And it was gooooood.

The big excitement of this weekend was pulling weeds in the backyard. I'm bound and determined to gain control of the wild kingdom, otherwise known as our backyard. This is some genetic predisposition I get from each of my parents. No weed shall go unpulled. However, we have A LOT in our yard so this pile only represents a small section, though 2 days of work.

I am sore and tired.

We did a walk this evening and met a neighbor/professional Elvis impersonator. Who knew.

Since we didn't get home until late last Sunday, I didn't get a chance to give a proper Happy Mother's day blog shout out. I had hopes of something more formal but wanted to say a very very happy Mother's day and thank you to my mother. I couldn't have asked for a better mom in the world. Not only did she teach me all the necessary life lessons growing up: how to shave my legs, blue eyeshadow is not becoming, how to properly load a dishwasher but I know it's directly from her that I got my sense of humor. We both always laugh at the same silly spots in the same movies. She is also my favorite shopping partner and always just fun to hang out with. Thanks mom!!!

Interlude

I do have a lot to blog about this week but we got home late last night and it's shaping up to be a late night work week so it may be a couple days before the real blog makes its appearance.

Regardless, happy mother's day to all yesterday!!!