Our 4-Day Weekend!!

Last week, the kids last day of school for the week was Wednesday because of parent/teacher conferences. It was nice having a couple of extra days off!! It was also gorgeous and in the low 70's and so nice and warm out during the Spring time!!

On Thursday morning, Sofy had her IFSP meeting and it went well enough, even though I had to bring the 3 kids with me to it. The girls were great, Alex got kind of bored and when he does he gets to bugging Bella. Luckily, the meeting didn't have to last long.
Sofy's teacher said that she is doing SO well, and we're both amazed at her phenomonal progress this year. She's spends her day with the mainstream 1st grade class, and has the SC (Social Communications Classroom, fancy name for Autism room), as basically her home room. She has grown so much this year, and I'm so amazed at her progess with the academics. She's reading, writing, spelling, and doing fantastic in math. She also has music and is in a modified PE. That teacher didn't realize that Sofy was a late walker until the meeting. She works on Sofy's kicking, throwing a ball, both under and over-hand, running, jumping, and all the other physical movements.
Because Sofy has been in the mainstream class, she's qualified for summer school this year!! Last year, she was the only student from the SC class to NOT qualify for it. They need to show either a slow growh, or a regression, to qualify for it, and this year they went based on the normal 1st grade curriculem.

After the meeting, the kids and I found a park near our house so that they can play, and I brought some sack lunches to eat for a fun picnic outside. They played for about 30 minutes, but it was already getting pretty warm, and the play equiment was kind of hot already. So we thought we would go to a nearby pond and feed some ducks with about 1/2 a bag of hamburger buns that had gone stale. The kids had fun, and there were some new ducklings with the Mama that LOVED the bread!! Bella LOVED feeing the babies.
Afterwards, we were just driving home when I noticed a huge rock on the road next under the sidewalk and I thought, "Is that a turtle?" So, I stopped, and had Alex get out and check it and he came back excited and said "Yeah, it's a turtle!" It was very dirty and probably came from the pond, but I've never seen a wild turtle out from a pond before, only those as pets. We saw a guy walking by and I asked him if he thought it was ok (I thought it had wandered pretty far from the pond), and he offered to take it back and away from the road.
We went home after that and Bella still had preschool about an hour later.

On Friday, we spent it as a great free day off, and I spent it cleaning the house, made cookies with the kids, and felt great to just relax all day!!

Jason has been the past several weeks working on helping to restore a PT boat, so he was doing that both Thursday and Friday. The boat is set to be shown during the Rose Festival in a couple of weeks and he's been having so much fun, and in his element working with historical ships. If he wasn't type 1 diabetic, he would have been in the navy so quick!! But, because of that, he could never serve in the military. I think I'm actually kind of relieved to not have to be a navy wife!

On Saturday, we knew we wanted to spend the day together outside (It was still in the 70's that day), so we thought we would go to the beach. We usually go to Cannon Beach or Newport, but we thought we would go to Tillamook that day. In all honesty, I WAS the one that wanted to go, I was having a need for some good ice cream! Hahaha.
So, we drove to Tillamook, which I realized we're only an hour away. It has been a while since we've drove out that way, and it's nice to know that we're just as close to the beach than we were when were in Eugene and only an hour to Florence.

On the way out, we went through the Taco Bell drive-thru and we ate our lunch as we drove out. We drove a few minutes outside of Tillamook and got into Oceanside and found a nice, more secluded beach access. It had a small vacation condo rental area and so it was quite calm. We found though that the coast wasn't nearly as warm as it was back in town. It was very windy, but the sand was nice and warm, so as long as we kept our coats on, we were great!
We were at the beach for about 2 hours, and Jason (Who goes off the two dogs while I stay back with the kids), came back soaking wet. Apparently, he was throwing a stick to Boudreaux (The 6 month old puppy), and he went into the ocean to get it, and didn't quite come back up. Jason saw his little head barely up on top and he went in to save him, and Rocky (our almost 7 year old one), saw him struggling and also went into "Help". Jason got both the dogs back, but was soaked!! So, we figured it was time to end our day. As we were leaving, the girls found a cute play structure that was probably build for the condo rentals that had a couple of swings, slide, and they also had a pirate flag, a plastic cannon, and telescope. So we let the girls play for a few minutes and rounded Alex and our stuff up.
We then went to a Fred Meyer for Jason to get some clean, dried clothes. We then made it over to the cheese factory. Bella loved it, and Sofy was actually quite into looking down in the production room. We made it back downstairs to the tasting area and there was quite a line and Sofy got so antsy to get to her cheese! After we tasted them all, we met up with Jason and Alex who got some cheese to buy, including Sofy's Tillamoos! She LOVES cheese. It's probably her favorite food!
We then waited in the VERY LONG LINE for the ice cream. Jason got a malt, I got my favorite flavor of all, Wild Mountain Blackberry, Alex got a wafer bowl with chocolate and nuts coating around the top with his favorite cookie dough, Sofy got chocolate, and bella got Black Cherry! We enjoyed our ice cream and decided it was time to head back home.
Just as were getting back in the car, Jason got a call from his Dad to see if he could help move a couch in the house. Their house in December got flooded when a two pipes burst during a big freeze we had in Portland. They had been in renovations since, and when we got over there, we found that their new wood floor was all put in the living room, the walls painted in a pretty green and beige colors, and looked so great! The kid wanted to play at the Pirate Park and so I went with them and they got to play for another 30 or minutes. We visited a bit more with his folks and we were all so tired and left. It was about 8:30 by this time. We got some McDonalds for dinner (Too late and tired to have me make something!) and ended our day with Kids getting baths and going to Bed!!!! We had a fun weekend and it was WONDERFUL being able to sleep in (Even Sofy slept in until about 8:30, which is pretty late for her in the morning. She can be up at 6:30, even on our days off!), spend time with the kids outside, and be together as a family!!