Welcome to the world!

This is Ender Paul Douglass. He is the newest addition to our extended Perkes family. It is Bob's sister, Beth and her husband, Ryan's baby. They named him after the book Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card--a good book, I might add. He was born May 17 around 9:00pm. I don't know the exact measurements, but I believe he was 9lbs. 3oz. and 20 inches long. It was a long day for Beth, but they are both doing great. For the longest time their dog, Maycie, was their "baby" so we are excited for them.
Here is Rex taking a peak the day after he was born.
Here is Eli smoochin' him up. Both boys were really excited for him to be born. Now he just has to catch up to Asa so they can be friends :)

Preschool Graduation

Here is Rex holding his diploma with Mrs. B. He had a really fun time with preschool this year. I was really impressed with some of the creative things his teacher came up with. He learned a lot. Even though it was a graduation, he will actually be going back next year. He has a later b-day so misses the kindergarten cut off date. Bob likes this so that he can be the oldest in his class and better at sports. Boys!
They are supposed to be singing a song and doing actions. My sweet boy was like the only one actually doing it. Way to go Rex!
Here is his best friend, Dawson. They used to live right across the park from us, but they just moved last month. :( They still live in town, but it isn't the same. He was actually the first kid Rex met when we moved here. His mom is my good friend and we do playgroup together.

Congrats Rex! (I can't believe he is growing up so fast!!)

The Beach!!

You gotta love California. I was happy to be going to a beach, but unfortunately on the day we went it wasn't near as warm as it should have been. It was windy and poor Asa had goosebumps. So, we kept as many clothes on him as we could. I was really bummed because we temporarily "misplaced" our camera for the day. These are pictures my dad took (thanks dad). Asa couldn't get enough of the sand. He ate tons of it, needless to say it was in his diaper for almost a week! The gross thing was that he had a runny nose and he drools a ton, so it was like he had sandcicles hanging off of his face. I wish I could have captured that!
Eli enjoying playing in the water.
Here are the boys running from the waves. The older boy with them is my nephew, Cody. He is 13 and joined us for the day. The boys had a lot of fun spending time with him.
Here they are playing in the sand with Grandpa.
Wait for the waves...wait...wait....run!

The Redwoods

The Redwoods are really beautiful. We were able to go and have a picnic there and we also went on a mini hike. The boys really liked exploring and climbing. I think they will enjoy camping this summer.
Here we are walking across a log. At one of the crossings my dad had Rex check to see if there were any trolls underneath. He probably had to read 3 Billy Goats Gruff about 10 times while we were there.
Bob is helping them across here. What you don't see is the water underneath with a whole bunch of rocks they can crack their skull on. I was a little nervous watching them go across, but their older cousin did it so ofcourse they had to as well.
My handsome little devils.

More rides!!

Here is my dad riding the "Thrilla Gorilla" with Rex.
Here is Eli and me on the same ride. It is one where you go really really fast in this big circle. You should have seen the look on Eli's face once we started going. It was pure terror. I ended up having to put my arm around him through the whole thing. He was happy to survive. We told him he shouldn't go on it, but he wasn't about not to go when everyone else was. He is an adventurous boy, but can also be scared pretty easily.
Eli and Bob enjoying the big swings together. I am in front of them and Rex is behind them. He wanted to ride by himself :)
Apparently the Dumbo ride is really exciting to Rex :) My parents always tell me about the first time we went to Disneyland and I was about 3. They said they had to wait hours in line so that I could go on the Dumbo ride...and I wanted to go again of course :) Here, there was no line at all!
They had a Thomas the train part of the amusement park, so here they are riding the helicopter. We all were able to ride Thomas together. Choo! Choo!

As you can see, the day was fun filled. There was a lot of great stuff to do there and it was the perfect day for weather and for crowds. Thanks again mom and dad for taking us there!

Random fun throughout the day

Asa loves being on Daddy's shoulders. He was a good sport throughout the day. He is almost always smiling.
The boys enjoying the looney toons land part of the park. There were all sorts of cool things. I don't know how many of you Portlanders have been to the OMSI, but they have a really fun room where you shoot balls out of random places. You put them in tubes and buckets and there are just balls flying everywhere. Well, they had a place just like that here too.
Luckily, my mom told us to pack some swimsuits. No other kids were in theirs really, but no other kids were as soaked as mine either :) They love these kind of water parks. We have one in the tri-cities, but we have only been to it a couple of times. I will have to get them out more this summer.
I just thought this was a really cute picture of Eli. I am sitting right next to him and we are about to enjoy a fun ride!

Animals up and close

Discovery Kingdom is a lot more than rollercoaster rides. We got to see a lot of animals there too. The boys liked seeing the lions and tigers and similar animals. Here they got to pet the elephant on her trunk.

They weren't too cooperative with this family photo, but at least you see us all there together.

They had whale and dolphin shows, which were fun. We got to sit in the third row for the whale show so we got to see it up close and personal. We did get splashed, but not as much as I would have expected. They did some fun tricks.

Sharks!

My internet has either been non-existant or really slow the last few days. Annoying! Anyway, there was a really cool shark exhibit there. You get to walk in this tunnel where the sharks swim all around you. There were some other really neat fish too. They weren't the hugest sharks in the world, but the boys thought it was neat.


Here are my boys showing off their chops. I don't know about you, but there is a reason why I NEVER want to swim in the ocean.

6 Flags Discovery Kingdom

This was a little kid spinny ride, but it did the job for me. My stomach needed a break after this one. It was the first ride of the day for us.
Rex riding the rhino round and round.
Eli posing with Grandma on the carousel.
This is the boat ride that swings up and down.
I am sure you have noticed that we are the only people on all of these rides. I would like to say we had the park reserved to ourselves, but we had the next best thing. It was a friday so everyone was still in school. Majority of people there came on school buses for fieldtrips, so all of the little kid rides were wide open! No waiting at all! It was amazing. That is the least crowded I have ever seen any amusement park. When Bob and I went to go on the biggest ride of the park we didn't wait longer than 15 minutes. And that was a FUN ride! It had a huge drop in the beginning. Right at the point where my stomach dropped I looked down and I was only half way down the drop! It was one of the longest rollercoaster rides I have been on and there were plenty of twisty turns upside down and all around. If you couldn't tell, I really like rollercoasters.

Grandma's House!

Asa with Grandma :)
We got some good swimming time in. It was definately hot!
Asa loved being in the water and splashing around. Here he is drying off.

Ok, ok. I have felt the guilt creep in as I have not blogged in almost 2 months. So here I am. In the beginning of May we were able to go visit my parents in California! We stayed for a week and it was a lot of fun. I flew down there with the boys all by myself. Yes, you heard me right. Me and three boys. I was not looking forward to the traveling at all. I was having anxiety about it, just knowing something would go wrong. So we drive to the airport which is 2 hours away. Everything is great. We go check in. Piece of cake. We go through security. No hiccups at all. We go eat lunch. We ate it all, went potty, with time to spare at the gate. We boarded the plane and the boys were excited. Asa fell asleep on take off and the boys stayed occupied with the things that I brought them. They each had their own backpack full of things to do. (the new spiderman crayons were a hit!) Asa woke up about half way through the flight, but he was all smiles. He just stood on my lap and smiled at everyone who would look at him. I just kept thinking, "wow, I can't believe this is going so well." I kept waiting for a problem to arise. But at the end of the flight I was told by the lady next to me that they were the most well behaved kids she has ever seen on a plane!!! Yeah for me!! That definately made me feel good.
So my parents picked us up and took us to a really fun park called Fairytale Land. There were a bunch of play structures and exhibits featuring different fairytales. The boys had fun there. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera there, but my dad took some pictures. As soon as I get those uploaded I will post them. We had a very fun time with Grandma and Grandpa Bell. On the drive home Eli kept asking us to turn around and go back. The next few posts will be about our trip. Thanks for everything mom and dad!