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Friday, July 29th, 2011

Tonight we made a traditional Danish dessert called “Rødgrød med Fløde.” (If you can pronounce this correctly, you are a true Dane). It translates as “red fruit dessert with cream” basically a fruit jelly served with cream over it. According to Else, you can make it out whatever berries you have on hand. We used black currents, raspberries, black berries and just a handful of blueberries. It turned out very delicious. I’ll put the recipe up on the food blog and you too can enjoy this unpronounceable Danish dessert!

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Thursday, July 28th, 2011

We took Magnus to his first movie in a theater today: Captain America. We all liked it. Magnus stayed awake for most of it and even got excited during one of Captain America’s many feats of strength. After the movie, someone complimented us on our “Captain America baby!” Yeah, lady, we think he’s pretty awesome, too.

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Wednesday, July 27th, 2011

Today, we wanted to spend some time up in and around a quiet stream. So, we took Elina with us and headed up to Amboy, and a creek called Canyon Creek. We knew of a place that had been opened up because of a landslide last year with nice pools. The water was very cold, so swimming was hard. But the rocks under the water were covered with hundreds of these caddisfly larvae. They make little casings to live in out of the materials in the water and silk. These ones have used sand and pine needles. We will make a bigger post about today soon.

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Tuesday, July 26th, 2011

 

Else gave me this Cyclamen to me at Christmas time. Now it is July and it is still going strong and making more flowers. Since the flowers are to heavy for the stem I gave them this pencil to prop them up.

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Monday, July 25th, 2011

Elina finally got to meet Magnus. She has finished school at BYU Idaho, and only has to do her student teaching this winter to be all done. She did get to do her graduation ceremonies before she left Rexburg. Congratulations, Elina! Elina and my mom stopped by our place when they got back into town. It was good to see them.

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Sunday, July 24th, 2011

Happy Pioneer Day!

I guess I can’t blame Anna for not wanting to be too close to these hoodlums. This is our Sunday attempt to get a picture of all the cousins. Sunday was also a day of partying. We all went out to Gladstone for Grant’s baby blessing and stayed for luncheon at the Guptill’s. Thanks, Guptill family for putting up with us crazy Keelers and Jensens!

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Saturday, July 23rd, 2011

Here is our sampling of Keeler cousins. We got together to play with the Guptills today and have an early birthday party for Anna. Originally we had just put Grant and Magnus down next to each other, but then Whitney decided she should be there too. Eventually we got Matthew and Anna in there too.

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Friday, July 22nd, 2011

Here is Dana keeping up all the photos we take. He really does a good job of keeping everything on computer organized. Thank you, honey!

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Thursday, July 21st, 2011

Happy Birthday, Katie!

Finally got this hung in the bathroom. Thanks, mom! Now all Magnus’s bath things are located in the same room. Yay for convenient storage things! Yay for Ikea!

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Wednesday, July 20th, 2011

When worlds collide!

The Guptills are in town! We met them out in Tillamook for a nice day at the beach. This was the first time Magnus has gotten to meet his cousin Grant (or any of us, for that matter). They are about four weeks apart. Grant seemed amused by the whole situation.  Magnus has stoically kept his opinion to himself, but I think he had fun too.

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Tuesday, July 19th, 2011

Magnus is rolling now. You will see in this picture he looks like he is crawling out from under the couch, but he started laying next to Dana.  I like this picture because Magnus and Dana are making the same face.

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Monday, July 18th, 2011

We went to the office tonight and had dinner with Ivan. After dinner we took a walk around the back yard. Magnus didn’t walk around, but he did take his turn standing in the grass… and drooling in it.

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Sunday, July 17th, 2011

The new Fort Vancouver Regional Library opened today! There is room for way more books than the old building. And the children’s floor is great. I’m kind of sad I’m not a kid. I think I’ll go play there anyway.

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Saturday, July 16th, 2011

I got a little gardening done today. Else gave me a zucchini plant and I bought a tomato and a pepper plant. We had some sunflower seeds from a few years ago that may not grow… but I planted them anyway. We’ll see if any of them come up. I’m crossing my fingers for anything to grow!

Chicken and Pig

Magnus had a bouncy chair that he likes to sit in. The chair has a small bar that we can attach that has some toys on it. The main toy is a smiling pig with a chick hanging from it.

He looks pretty innocent to me. Magnus will sit and talk to pig and whap chicken to make the two of them spin and rattle. He’ll do this for a while very happily. Then, he’ll suddenly lose it and begin to cry. I can only assume that pig systematically insults him in the course of their conversation and finally gets one that truly bothers Magnus. Can’t you see that pig relishing making my baby cry?

See how distrustful Magnus looks? And yet in a few hours Magnus will happily sit and play with pig and chicken again…at least until hostilities erupt.

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Thursday, July 14th, 2011

Dana found this and brought it home “for Magnus.” It’s not just a DeLoran, it’s the DeLorean. The license plate reads, “Outatime,” and you can see the time circuits in the window. Unfortunately, it does not have a flux capacitor, so it doesn’t actually travel through time. But if it did that, we probably wouldn’t be able to buy it for a dollar.

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Wednesday, July 13th, 2011

Magnus has recently been resting in this position. We think he is either preparing himself for owning a sweet motorcycle (the kind with the wide handles) or to be an airplane pilot. Either way, he’ll be on the move.

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Tuesday, July 12th, 2011

One of the perks of living in Vancouver is the large-ish Russian-speaking population. Dana went on his mission to Ukraine and earned an affinity for some of their foods. We found a Russian store with the largest selection so far. We bought some lemonade Fanta and some special red sauce and ate them with Russian pelmeni (filled with potatoes and bacon). It was pretty delicious.

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Monday, July 11th, 2011

Happy Free Slurpee Day!

Else has many raspberry canes and many many raspberries. They are in full swing right now, and we took the liberty of stopping by to pick a few. Magnus had fun as long as the sun wasn’t in his eyes.

Also, we took advantage of Free Slurpee Day at 7-Eleven and got our free Slurpee…yum.

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Sunday, July 10th, 2011

We watched Secretariat tonight; nice movie, and the ending is happy. I needed a s’more during the course of the movie, so I used our Cars themed marshmallows and extra large chocolate chips to make one. I’m kind of crazy about microwave s’mores; now that I’ve had them, I can’t go back.

PS: the orange marshmallow is a traffic cone. We had to look it up on the package.

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Saturday, July 9th, 2011

We love the farmer’s market! Especially now since the strawberries have finally come into season. I bought a whole flat and made a bunch of jam. Yum!

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Friday, July 8th, 2011

Happy 5th Anniversary to us!

For our anniversary Else took Magnus and we went out to dinner. Afterwards we went for a walk along the river. We reminisced about some of our favorite times in the past 5 years and it’s been an eventful road. Here’s to us!

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Thursday, July 7th, 2011

We’re having fun talking to Magnus and getting him to make response sounds to us. It often involves smiling all around. He also likes chewing on his burp rags. Whatever floats your boat, Magnus.

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Wednesday, July 6th, 2011

We took an excursion to the coast today to escape the hot weather. It got up almost to 90 degrees. When we got to the beach and put on our sweatshirts and socks to be comfortable it occurred to me that something had changed. Washington has weakened my ability to deal with hot weather. Or maybe I’m just getting old.

We went to the Tillamook Cheese Factory and we also stopped at the Blue Heron Cheese Factory just up the road. They have a petting zoo complete with this emu who had to investigate Dana’s camera pretty closely.

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Tuesday, July 5th, 2011

Phone picture today. We’re still recovering from our night of fireworks, I guess.

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Monday, July 4th, 2011

Happy Birthday, America!

Here we are at the Fort waiting for the fireworks to start. Anton’s friend Crystal staked out a primo spot early in the morning and let us mooch in next to her for the show. Thanks, Crystal! Magnus was happy until about 10 minutes before the show. So I rocked him and hummed patriotic songs to him and he fell asleep. And slept for almost 8 hours. Whoa! Thanks also to Ivan who came and celebrated with us (and bought us elephant ears!).

Happy 4th, everybody!

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Sunday, July 3rd, 2011

Happy 2 Months, Magnus!

Magnus loves standing up. So much so that it wears his parents’ arms out. Dana devised this system for Magnus that keeps him happy for about 2 minutes. He is also a professional drooler.

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Saturday, July 2nd, 2011

I can’t remember if I boasted about my calendar project already. But if I did, here is a picture of snazzy July. Notice the Harry Potter Movie date is marked.

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Friday, July 1st, 2011

Happy Birthday, Mom!

Anton had another dessert night. This time Dana told me to make lemon sugar cookie. I was at a loss at what to make, but the cookies went over well. Dana played Jenga and toppled the tower. We played Bananagrams and I won (against Dana, not against multiple opponents).

Good times.

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Thursday, June 30th, 2011

Dana went to see Transformers with Brian tonight. Before the previews started the screen freaked out and then the Windows Start bar showed up… It all turned out OK and Dana got to see the movie. Apparently it was much better than the second one: way more fighting robots.

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Wednesday, June 29th, 2011

Today was Magnus’s first zoo visit. He slept the whole time, and we even rode the train. We saw lots of fun animals, including a new baby beaver which was very cute. And we had a yummy elephant ear. Magnus woke up when we took him out of the carrier at the end, to get ready to leave. We thought it would be fun to get a picture of him on this mountain goat. He wanted to know why we woke him up from a perfectly good nap for a dumb ‘ol goat statue. We didn’t have a good reason.

Magnus also had a doctor visit. He weighed in at 12 lbs. 2 oz. and was 24 and 1/4 in. long.