September

September in pictures. . . 

We spent Labor Day at the zoo! I love that Collin is old enough to be excited about seeing all the animals. He especially loved the lion, since he's a big fan of the Lion King. Another favorite was the monkey eating a banana.

There's a giraffe hidden in the background!

Petting the fake squirrel.

High-five for the bear

One evening, Collin was quietly sitting at our pantry for a long time. When we asked him what he was doing, he said he was making a "castle." We kind of forgot about it, and then the next morning, we found this: 

There's a baby food jar tower in the middle there, and he even arranged the other baby food rows by color. We love his creativity!

At the beginning of the month, Rob and I ran the Hero Up Half Marathon! We had heard about it on facebook a while back and knew we wanted to train and run it. It was put on by a family from Yakima who lost one of their twin boys to cancer. It was a really good race, we saw a few people we knew there, and it was for a great cause. 

It felt good to reach my goal of running another half marathon, since having to basically start all over with running after having the twins (not to mention the amount of time I have to dedicate to training has decreased quite a bit since adding two more babies!). I waited until the last minute to register because I wasn't sure I'd be ready for it. But, I'm glad we did. I didn't give myself any goal for time and was just proud of myself for completing it. I felt like I did my best to train and put forth as much time as I was able to, so I was happy with the accomplishment. Rob did great too, and it was fun to be able to run the same race together.

I remember the morning after my 6 week post-delivery appointment, I went out and ran one mile and felt like passing out. I've increased my distance a lot since then. . . but this half marathon was not easy for me! I felt like I was near passing out the last couple of miles. After Rob finished, he came back to meet me for the last half mile or so and cheered me on through the finish line.

Collin was really excited that we won medals. (He's a big Wreck-it Ralph fan).

Silly Collin putting on his own shirt . . . 

These two like to be my helpers whenever the dishwasher is open. (T, E)

Elliott likes to just sit there on our step lately.

Collin was cute trying out chopsticks at a restaurant.

Elliott. The twins had a blast at our community center's open play. 

We had to take one last trip to Oaks Park's Preschool program. This is definitely one of our favorite Portland things. Truman and Elliott were too little for the rides, but they were happy just watching everything. They did get to ride on the train with us!

Collin was obsessed with the slide, as always, and now goes down by himself rather than in Rob's lap. Once he reaches the bottom, he says, "again!" and runs back up.

He's also way into the Tilt-a-Whirl. 

Taking Collin on these rides is so much fun. We are just as excited as he is- he can't get enough of the thrill, and we can't get enough of his smiles and laughs. The weather was perfect and there were no lines, so we had a blast running around to as many rides as we could squeeze in. I want to always remember the pure, carefree happiness of spinning around on a ride next to my smiling little boy.

Only passengers on the rollercoaster!

Me and Elliott on the train

Truman and Daddy

Just looking back at these pictures makes me smile. Even though I feel like this blog is basically just a photo catch up every now and then, I'm glad to be able to at least have a little record of these things. Someday I'll miss the times when we'd take our little boys to the zoo and community center and amusement park, and these photos will be precious. Actually, just typing that makes me a little sad that this sweet time in my life is fleeting. I'm just trying to soak in this stage as much as possible!