my baby is six months old

17 lbs. 2 oz.
23 3/4 inches long

Memorial Day

I snapped a couple pictures with my phone when we stopped by Nathaniel's grave yesterday. We stopped by New Seasons and put together such a beautiful bouquet! Okay, so we picked out the flowers but someone else arranged it - I'm just not that talented.


When Hazel started pulling the grass around the headstone up by the roots, we knew it was time to go :)


Hope you all enjoyed your long weekend!

grrr.

So we moved into our house this past February. One of the major draws of it was the privacy all the surrounding trees offered. We could only see our two neighbors across the street, and no one to the north or south of us. Well, the landlord decided to pull up some of the overgrown brush and old nursery trees run wild in order to clean up the property. We were okay with that because he promised to leave a buffer of trees between us and the row of houses to the south of our property.

The brush clearing guy showed up about two weeks early and got down to business. I'll have to post a before picture, but for now, here are two pictures of the present damage he's done. You can see our house from the road now (it used to be that you'd have to be right in front of our place before you noticed it). Oh, and the guy ripped up all the trees. He didn't leave a buffer. The neighbors are ticked. The city has actually sent out a couple representatives to take pictures of what's being done, so who knows where this is going to go.

All I know is that the changes being made are ugly. Now the neighbors can see everything we do. We have absolutely zero privacy. Our entire house is exposed.



There's nothing we can do about any of this, of course. We're only renters. Today I actually had to leave the house with Hazel, though - the brush clearing guy decided to burn the piles he'd made (without forewarning us) and my house started to smell strongly of smoke. I had a throbbing headache by the time we cleared out.

All that to say I'm very sad by the changes being made. I really hate it. It's hard to still like where we live when I compare the lack of privacy we have now to the incredible privacy we had before. Sheesh.

Hazel and The Beach

After months and months of waiting we finally made a trip out to the beach! And it was just as fantastic as we'd hoped it would be - the weather was just right. It rained during the night but remained dry during the days, and even warm! There was a bit of a wind, but nothing truly outrageous.

For March, it was lovely.



We stayed in Twin Rocks again and took Hazel to God's Finger, Oswald West, and Cannon Beach. I think we'll hit Nehalem, Seaside, and North Beach on our next trip...which is in only a few weeks! Tis the season for beach trips...

We really enjoyed packing Hazel around. It was tiring but we took it in turns and had a blast. We discovered a new place to buy excellent fish and chips in Cannon Beach, so Nate is really looking forward to our next trip out there.

God's Finger:





Oswald West:





Cannon Beach:





Rockaway:




Even thought it looks like we hit all these beaches in one day, well, okay so we did. It was a busy trip. We were late in getting out there so we really only had Sunday to trek around to all the stops we wanted to make. Hazel was a trooper!

Hazel and the Tulip

These pictures are from probably a month an a half ago - I fully intended to post them promptly, but of course I didn't. Don't worry, I think I'll begin to get much better at this now that I'm no longer working at Starbucks. Did I mention that? Oh yes, handed in the green apron...I'm glad to be home with Hazel now. Not that my hours really took away from her, they were so limited. I was working three or four mornings a week 4:30am to 8:30am. When I returned from work, Hazel and I would lay down and nap together for a couple hours and then our day would really begin in the afternoon. I rarely spent any quality time with Nate - I'd fight to get into bed by 8:30 or 9pm most nights. But now I sleep as long into the morning as Hazel will let me, and right now she's napping while I'm updating this blog! Nate and I have been able to catch up and hang out together the last three evenings and it's been wonderful. So the world looks a little brighter with this simple change of a job.

Back to the pictures. Hazel sat with Nate one morning while we had breakfast together and it was *cute, fun, adorable, wonderful* (all sorts of girly terms can be used here).