Catch Up

Whew! It's been three straight weeks of vacation, so fun! I'll just start at the beginning, with one of my favorite house projects ever. 

My dad and mom came down for the last weekend of June and while they were there my dad and Joel built a fence on the side of our house that had previously been fence-less. I hated that kids could just toddle out of our back door, around the side yard, and out into the street. Not to mention that giant pile of tree debris from our yard projects. 

It involved some cutting:

Some post hole digging and post-placing:

Some measuring:

And then more cutting:

(And did I mention that they did a lot of this is in the rain?)

After a lot less time than I thought fence-building would take, they were finished!

It's not actually crooked in real life, it's my picture taking skills. Look at that fabulous door they built!

And of course, Lucy had to inspect it to make sure it was up to code. 

So there you go! The beginning of the fun! I'm beyond thrilled with this fence. Thanks dad and Joel!

Park Adventures

A few Sundays ago we headed over to Alton Baker Park for a little after-church-adventure:

Alton Baker is a huge park in Eugene that contains paths for running, biking and walking along the river, a dog park, an amphitheater, and even a small scale model of the solar system (1:1 billionth scale). 

It's also home to the fattest and friendliest waterfowl in Eugene. 

Unfortunately, because of the number of people that feed the birds, most of them have developed Angel Wing, which is a little sad to see. 

So we don't feed them, we just sit and admire them as they float on by. 

I didn't get any pictures of the really large ducks and geese, mostly because they're the same size as Lucy and we had to hold her to keep them from taking exploratory nips at her face. But it was a lovely afternoon adventure for the Cohen family!

Family Love

Here are two pictures I'm loving right now. Lucy with Dada:

And the hubs and I:

Although as much as I love this shot, the lighting was cracking us up a little bit. Somehow the way the shadow hit my face made me look a bit like the two face girlfriend in Seinfeld.

Am I right?

5 Years and Counting

June 8th was our 5 year wedding anniversary! 

So, just for fun, I dug up our 1 year anniversary photo. Here we are. Two young lovebirds:

And here we are 5 years later:

Yeah, so this second picture is certainly not going to win any awards. I didn't want to scare the waitress by giving her my Nikon to take our picture with, so we just used my old kodak. And it's a bit blurry and my smile is a bit forced, but I still think you can see a huge difference between us now and us 5 years ago!

Since I'm the one who writes the most on this blog, I get to take the opportunity to say what an incredible guy I married. I still remember one of the first nights on our honeymoon Joel suggesting that we should pray together, on our knees, before we go to bed at night. I'd never really prayed consistently on my knees before (barring a short stint in a Catholic school), but I was impressed by Joel's suggestion and it's a tradition we still keep up. Not only is it a position of respect towards our God, but it's a position that shows our commitment to each other. We are traveling on this journey side by side, looking up and ahead to the glory that is coming.

I knew that night that I had married someone really great and I'm learning that more and more as the years go by. It's been 5 years of major change for us: new jobs, new baby, new houses, new cities, new states, but we've worked through all these new changes together, and it's grown us closer together and closer to each other.

I love you, babe! Here's to 50 more years!

In which the only thing that matters is the mouse

This is how all readings of "Goodnight Moon" go right now. Someone has a real love of mice. Sorry (I suppose maybe I should apologize to Lucy?) for the naked baby, it was hot in our house!

As promised, here are more pictures of the grandparents' visit. It was great having them here and we wish they could have stayed longer. Lucy came down with a cold the day they arrived which both Mom and Dad C managed to contract, but everyone bore it cheerfully and we all got along just fine. ;)

Here's Lu and Grandpa (Bampa is what she's calling him right now) getting coffee on our way down to farmer's market:

And of course the obligatory stop at the park for some "whee" (swing) time. 

Despite having colds, Howard and Sunny were quite willing to help us with the myriad of backyard projects. It was cool and overcast for their visit, but it didn't rain hardly at all which made it perfect for working out in the yard. 

Joel bought a bunch of bricks off of craigslist which he and Howard pressure washed. Since then Joel has started to make them into a border that will separate our grass from our decorative bush/groundcover area.

Sunny and I did a lot of weeding and pruning of overgrown bushes. Sunny even got so adventurous as to attempt to take out this little guy:

But I think we'll have to wait until we hire a bobcat to rip it out, which we are planning on doing very soon now that Joel has drained the little pond fixture in the backyard (another project we tackled with Mom and Dad here):

It was disgusting and I'm thoroughly impressed with Joel for his bravery in the face of horrible slime and overpowering stench. But now that it's drained, we need to break up all the concrete and move out those giant heavy rocks before we can fill the hole with dirt. Farewell pond. You were a nice idea, if we didn't have a child and many small children who frequently visit and are unreasonably attracted to water. Too bad we had to nickname you death trap.

After all that yard work, we did reward them with some sightseeing around town. We went up to the top of Skinner's Butte and admired the view of Eugene and the surrounding hills:

Lucy was very comfortable with her perch:

Here they all are!

Then we went to the rose garden where Howard admired this gigantic tree:

Lucy and Joel played Alice in Wonderland:

And Sunny and I ambled through all the different varieties of roses and daydreamed about filling our gardens with them.

Such a fun visit! 

Mount Calvary Cemetery

Joel's mom and dad came to visit over Memorial Day weekend, and while I have lots of pictures to show you of the two of them soaking up lots of Lucy time and fun little trips to Eugene sites, I thought I'd start with the most memorable one: visiting Christian's memorial. 

Christian is buried at Mount Calvary Cemetery, a beautiful cemetery in the south hills of Eugene, owned by the archdiocese of Portland. We went to Riverbend Hospital the night we lost our baby, which is a catholic hospital that values the lives of all children, even those who are considered "not-yet-children" by most of our nation. Because we went to Riverbend, they took our lovely boy and buried him in this beautiful place with no cost to us. I will forever be grateful to the staff of that hospital who poured out on us so much compassion and showed us the love of Christ as we went through this trial. 

Mount Calvary Cemetery has a special memorial dedicated to unborn children.

The central plaque lists the names of the children who are buried there.

I couldn't have put it better myself. Here for a brief moment in our lives, forever in our hearts.