Willem is TEN!

Willem turned TEN on July 29th and we celebrated with donuts in the morning, a trip to the John Deere store, a drive in the country, lots of playing on his new iTouch and dinner and frozen yogurt at the restaurant of his choice, Dickie Jo's!

We sure love our athletic, (relatively :) low maintenance, outdoorsy though TV-&-xbox-loving, math wiz, always barefooted, often shirtless, kind, awesome hugger, farmer Willem!

Vital stats: Height: 4' 11" (2" growth from a year ago), Weight: 88 lbs (11 more than last year)

Favorite sports to play: Soccer then basketball then football then track
Favorites to watch: Soccer and football (and he knows every stat, player and record of every college team!)

Looking forward to your 11th year, Willem! We love you sooooo much (and lots MORE!)

 

 

Birthday donut...his favorite: maple bar!

Nev sure loves and looks up to her big brother!  

Checking out his new iTouch!

Willem doesn't play with his farm toys too often anymore but I was able to capture this a couple weeks ago. 

Willem sure loves the xbox and especially his College Football, Madden and FIFA

Birthday dinner at Dickie Jo's!

Seaside!

We had a great four day weekend in Seaside at the beginning of the month. We all loved staying at The Resort at Seaside in the 8th floor penthouse condo with tons of space, amazing views, a BBQ, kitchen and two bedrooms plus a great pool. We don't want to stay in a regular hotel room again! We were lucky to have two beautiful sunny days (plus two overcast ones). It was just nice being together and relaxing.

Views from our patio 

Our hotel in the background

A brave Nev!

Fun on the beach!

I loved relaxing on the beach!

 Chad took these of me and I actually liked them :)

Paddle-boating wasn't as much fun as we hoped but we made the best of it (it was a lot of work mostly!)

Family volleyball game was lots of fun (even though we were awful!)

Some sports on the beach

Cade harassing the seagulls 

Pool time! Nev especially loved the pool and was in it for hours and hours 

Fort Stevens was pretty cool

A little shopping with my girls!

Gorgeous sunset walks with my hubby were the best!

Love this guy :)

After our four days in Seaside, I had to work in Seattle for the day and when flying home I spotted our dairy (the green patch on the left) from
the plane. I had never been able to find in while flying into Eugene until now!

Beaverton Cup

This is my first post using the blogger app on my iPhone. I'm hoping this will keep me more current with my posts especially when we are out of town!

This past weekend Willem played with the EMFC Dortmund Blue U11 team in the Beaverton Cup which was the qualifier for the NWCL. All the top Portland teams played and it was very competitive.  Willem's team lost 1-3 to WAFC, tied Southside 0-0, lost 1-4 to the eventual champion Westside Timbers Copa and lost 1-4 to Eastside Timbers Black. Though the team didn't get any wins they really competed with these top teams despite missing three starters as well as Max from Valencia and having not played together much. Their performance showed that this team will be competitive with the premier teams in the state in the coming years. Willem played well in goal as well as at forward and center defense.

Probably the most memorable thing about the weekend for Willem was having Irwin and Garret with us all weekend. Between games on Saturday, we took the team to downtown Portland and explored a bit. No soccer pictures this time but here are a few from our adventures in downtown as well as one of us checking out, once again, from Embassy Suites Sunday morning.

Walking the streets of downtown Portland where I used to walk most days when I worked at PriceWaterhouseCoopers

Another Sunday checking out of Embassy Suites!

Birthday Party for Cade, Willem and Daniel

Tonight we had a family birthday party for Cade (14), Willem (10) and cousin Daniel (20). We were missing a bunch of family with David and Athena in Colorado for soccer; James, Jenn, Meleesa and Selene in San Fran for soccer; Greg and Tere off camping; and no out-of-towners around to help celebrate. We still had a nice time together on a beautiful summer evening. 

 The birthday boys!

 Fun to see how these three have changed since they celebrated together three years ago!

Cousins!

Gabrielle, Grandma, Auntie Carrie, Aunt Amy and Mariah

Opa and Grandpa

Genevieve trying to cheer Davida up :)

Our attempt at a family pic

So hard to get a good one in just a few tries!

Nev,Elle & other cousins enjoyed looking at Chad and my wedding album at the party. So fun!

Early Birthday Dinner for Me!

I am so lucky to have a great group of life-long girlfriends and, although we do not get together nearly as much as we'd like, we always have a great time together. Last week we got together to celebrate Liz and my birthdays with drinks, pedi/mani's, a little shopping, a ride in Julie's new convertible and dinner! Julie, Christy, Liz and I spent the whole afternoon and evening together and we were joined by Julie Sherman and Chris for dinner. What a fabulous eight hours!

Our Cade is 14!

Happy Birthday to our boy! It's been amazing to see the transformation Cade has gone through over the past couple years. I so love the young man he is becoming. He is so kind, loving, smart, witty and so unique :) I am a very proud mom!

Cade is now over 5' 8" and over 140 lbs. That's a 30 pound increase since last year plus 4 inches of height!

For his birthday, Cade went to the mall with his siblings for lunch and a little birthday shopping, we then spent the afternoon at Amazon Pool with a whole crew of cousins. After the pool, Cade hung out with cousins Daniel and Roman until we went to dinner at BJ's as a family. It was a good day, I know I enjoyed it!

 Treats at the mall

Cade is so good to his siblings. He used some of his birthday money to get some fun pics with Genevieve

With his cousins and brother at the pool

   The whole crew!

Cade and Selene 

Elle and Mariah