About Us Blurbs

It's been a whopping 2 years since I updated the About Us blurbs on the right side of the blog. If you want to read the old ones, they're posted here along with a little collage of some super cute pictures of Emmett when he was only 4 months old! That really makes these two years seem like a long time! Meanwhile, here's the new ones that will grace the sidebar, and hopefully I can try to update them once a year instead of in another two! Although, I can't imagine Travis and mine will change much from here.

I met Travis in Institute at Oregon State University in 2001 and we were married Aug 2002. We have 3 boys, Avery, Carson and Emmett. After four years in Milwaukee, WI for Travis to attend Marquette University Dental School, we now are back home in Salem, OR. I love photography and run a business, Laurie Marie Photography. I love nature and feel like I can't get enough of its beauty. Going to the dunes is one of my favorite things to do, as I get nature and driving fast on a quad or in a sandrail! I also love book club.

Travis is a dentist here in Salem at Hunsaker Dental.
Travis' other accomplishments to date: a general handyman extraordinaire, general construction, pro concrete finisher, woodworking, fly tying, good general vehicle knowledge for fixing our cars, etc. etc. He's very useful to have around!
Travis loves going shooting, riding his motorcycle, woodworking, working on/fixing things, going to the Oregon dunes with his quad and homebuilt sandrail, hunting, fishing, crabbing, snowboarding, and water sports.

Avery was born in Dec 2004 and is now 6 and a Kindergartner. He loves being a big brother to Carson and Emmett.
When he grows up Avery still wants to be a dentist and all the other "jobs" he was going to do as well have taken a back seat. Occasionally he thinks he'd like to be a dentist as well as whatever type of science related job strikes his fancy. Avery continues to be off the chart tall, and while he's not as skinny as he used to be, he's still skinny.
Avery tells me what he loves: riding the quad, karate (which he "practices" at home), playing with his toys, SpongeBob, everything science, dinosaurs, bones, animals, reading science books, watching science shows, flying kites, the snow, playing with his brothers, riding his bike, playing on the Wii, going on dates with Mom.

Carson was born in March of 2007 and is now almost 4 years old.
He loves his brothers and doing whatever his brothers are doing. Carson has amazing patience when it comes to puzzles. He is an incredible puzzler. He loves fruits, vegetables, chicken nuggets, nachos or any type of "nacho" soup, pb&j and that's about it. At least he loves fruits and vegetables! Carson is our sweet sensitive boy and struggled a little saying goodbye to Mom for a while when going to his preschool, but he's doing better now. His fixation with Lightning McQueen and the movie Cars continues, but he also loves Toy Story, Tom & Jerry and a few others. Carson is still tall, but not off the chart like his brothers.

Emmett was born in September of 2008 and is now 2 years old.
Emmett is our Mr. Mischief. He's not just curiously getting into things the way Avery always did, he actually looks to make mischief. He looks for things he can do to get a rise out of someone. He loves to be loud and run, but still loves to be cuddled. Emmett loves taking Carson to preschool so he can have some time to play with play-doh and other fun things not available at home. Emmett loves to go go go, running, playing, everything, he's on the go. Emmett continues to be off the chart tall, but he has more breadth than Avery. Maybe he'll be our football player.

Mustache

Carson is enjoying the mustache look lately. Here's a couple from my camera phone.


I cut a red pepper to look like a heart for Carson and Emmett and Carson discovered an awesome fu manchu mustache after biting the bottom of the heart off.

Sunny Day

Saturday was a lovely day, in fact, it's still quite nice out, so the boys went out to ride their bikes while Travis washed the cars.


The boys did try to help with the washing, but this was all they managed around the whole van and then quit it.


Instead, they drove and ran back and forth through the soapy water.


Splash splash splash


Who doesn't love to splash?

Spokane Again

Last weekend we went back up to Spokane for a short visit so Travis could attend a dental seminar.

So Avery had to make Avery Cakes again the first morning (and had more from the leftover batter the next morning)!


Grandpa showed him how to crack an egg and then let Avery do the second one. That picture didn't turn out.


Carefully pour the eggs and oil


Carefully pour the milk


Mix.


Grandpa even made an A for Avery. Obviously he followed that up with a C for Carson and an E for Emmett too.


And of course there was more Dominoes.


And Mom pulled out a box of little "choking-hazard" toys that had been put away for so long since there was always a baby around, but now that the kids are old enough it was time to bring it out. Carson loved the farm animals. We lined them all up in groups, then set up a pen and he carefully added as many to that pen as he could.


I love this kid's patience in carefully playing with things!


"Mom, I love them!"


Setting up the "humans" just right to feed the animals


This poor guy was out of luck though.


"Look Mom, I'm in a tunnel!" Whatever you say, Emmett.


Avery also wanted to make cinnamon rolls with Grandma. Carson and cousins Chloe and Jace helped out too.


Then I found Avery and Jace relaxing together. I can't help but wonder how this came about.


So we got the other kiddos to get in there too (Emmett was napping)


Silly boys!


When Emmett woke up he came in and matter-of-factly climbed up next to Grandma like that was obviously the natural thing to do.


Soon it was time to say goodbye and hit the road. The truck had already been filled so we were good to go for the whole trip (the truck's tank is big enough that we don't have to stop like we do with every other vehicle) and we made great time. We even saw a rainbow over the gorge. It was a great drive home... until...


Until we were 15 minutes from home (after 7 hours of driving) and Avery says, "I'm not feeling so good" then starts throwing up all over the place 10 seconds later. Thanks for the warning Avery. Turns out the poor guy hadn't been feeling good for a while but was trying not to be a bother by not saying anything. Obviously that back-fired when not saying anything turned into a much bigger mess. I think we will travel with barf bags from now on. We know too much junk (like at New Year's) makes him sick, and we've decided junk plus driving does too. He puked all over Grandma H's car after eating a bunch of McD's and then driving around a while. He puked right after getting out of the car with Gma H and Papa after Papa let him eat a whole sleeve of Oreos. And now grilled cheese and fries (and to make it worse that's a much greasier meal than he typically gets when we do fast food) from Jack in the Box plus hours of driving with us got him. Ugh. So gross. At least he can look at all those incidences and realizes that he needs to take it easy with that kind of food. And despite feeling better after we got home, he willingly decided on his own to pass up any dinner and take it easy. Poor kid. What a bummer way to end the trip, but the rest of the trip was great!

Mud

Back on the 11th we had a little bit of snow fall that just dusted the ground and probably melted within a few hours. But seeing the snow, the boys just had to go outside and play. A short while later Carson came upstairs into the office like this.


Oh, look, the mud keeps going.


And going and going and going, right down to the muddy boots still on his feet that he walked up my carpeted stairs in. *UGH!* He left a big muddy streak on the wall by the back door too. I don't think his going outside to play was worth it, and based on how quickly he came in, I don't think he thought it was worth it either.

Shooting

On New Year's Day, loads of the Hunsaker family drove into the Cascade foothills to go shooting. I didn't go. Carson would have hated the noise and Emmett would have needed to be left strapped in his car seat to keep him safe, he's just too young and all over the place to be let around that kind of thing. Also, this new location they shot at turned out to be particularly child unfriendly because it was right off the road without a lot of room to do anything but shoot, so there would be no taking them off separately to play in the snow or anything. I didn't get to go last year either. Travis wants to make it up to me by taking me shooting just the two of us for a date, which sounds great, we haven't done that since before kids, but that's not quite the same as going with the whole family. It's been three years since the last time I got to go with everyone.

Here's Travis, Angela and DeAnna shooting the .50 cal. Check out what happens to the stuff on the table when Travis shoots. Angela and DeAnna show how the gun kicks.

Shooting 50 cal BMG from Laurie H on Vimeo.

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Here someone shoots some Tannerite, a legal exploding target.

Shooting Tannerite from Laurie H on Vimeo.

That gate was like swiss cheese from so many people using this place as a shooting range.
Here's a picture of what the .50 looks like in the fence


This is the inside of the tube. The lump at the bottom is what the .50 did to 2 inches of steal. All the other lumps and holes higher up are in a section of steal that's only half the width of the base. Only the .50 made a mark in the double thick section! That's some serious power.


Here's a picture I found showing a good comparison of the .50 to other bullet sizes. That's the .50 on the left.


Avery also got to shoot and even his his target on the first shot.

Avery's turn to shoot from Laurie H on Vimeo.

New Year's

I only took one picture leading up to midnight. Avery ate too many sausage, cheese and Ritz cracker sandwiches and then puked it all out. So I had to take care of him and then he curled up in my lap and fell asleep and this is the one shot I took with my phone.


When midnight came I woke Avery and asked if he wanted to participate in the merry making outside.
He did, although I don't think he was in the best mood. In fact, when the kids were on the porch waiting for the adults to finish with the guns and the cannon, I caught this shot of the punk mid-naughtiness.


Finally, the grown-ups were done and the kids got to play with a few sparklers and poppers.


This was Emmett's first sparkler!




Olivia loved her sparkler


Avery's popper turned out to be rather stuck and aunt Angela had to help.


Happy New Year!

The Drive Home

This is basically a scenic post. Before I get to the drive home, I said in the first post about Spokane that we went out the morning that Spokane was freshly blanketed in snow so I could take pictures of the winter wonderland the city had become. Most of those I have posted over on Laurie Marie Photography, but here are two others from the morning:

I can't help but wonder, is this the crazy duck lady's house?


The local public pool was looking a lot more private than public.


On the drive home snowy Spokane could only partially be seen through the icy windshield. It was sunny and glistening out and I wish there had been a little of that on my snowy photographic expedition the day before.








Watch out!








Back in the gorge, the sun had just recently set when we came to the first views of Mt. Hood.












The boys did really well on the drive, thankfully, and we made it home in decent time.

Today, I'm actually getting this posted after we just got back from Spokane again for a short weekend there for Travis to attend a dental seminar. The drive home didn't end up quite as decently. The details can wait for that post.