Alki Beach, Washington with Yury, Caryn, Levi, Isabelle, Emma, and baby Jack

We made it to Washington!! An extremely long drive but we made it. The first thing on the agenda was to check out Alki Beach which allows you to view the Seattle Skyline. Caryn made us some yummy Chicken salad and we had a picnic on the beach. I was an overcast day but it was still extremely pretty and the atmosphere in this part of Washington was rather, laid back, hippy style. Here is Levi driving his remote control car around in the rocks. What a handsome guy!

Baby Jack (top, with Caryn and bottom, with Yury) is the cutest little boy! He has the a really sweet temperment and would never really cry.. he would just do these soft cries when he got hungry or tired. Not that he doesn't scream or bawl I'm sure, but he was extremely good and calm while we were there. But then again, we are used to the screaming at the top of her lungs, most needy thing on the planet, baby Scarlett :)

Here was our view of the city. It was getting pretty dark with the cloud cover even though it wasn't that early.

Here's sweet Isabelle and Yury behind her looking out at the city skyline. Yury was telling us about the ferries that shuttle people back and forth from all the different islands and various cities as well as the huge loading boats that they use to ship the big crates with.

From this picture you can tell that the downtown portion of Seattle actually sites a little ways from the Space Needle, which I didn't know. The Space Needle is the third largest building in Seattle.. But when it was built, in 1962 it was the largest building on the West Coast.

I wish that these crabs would've been alive. They were actually dead and just had washed up on the shore. We also found jellyfish caps and Emma and Isabelle were able to catch alive jellyfish simply by scooping up some of the waves that hit the shore line!! you could barely see that they were there.. It was like looking and little tiny pulsating dots in the form of a circle. I've included a picture below.

Hermiston Oregon - Hi Grandpa Pat, we miss you!!

We traveled through Hermiston Oregon to visit Andy's dad's house and to see how his house looked now and to reflect on his life. It has been a little over a year since his passing and it's really sad to think that our kids will never get to know their Grandpa Pat. Good thing we have some good stories for them and we were able to get to know Pat when we were able to visit with each other. He was such a warm hearted, kind man. WE MISS YOU!! I thought that these sunset pictures of Hermiston were so beautiful and they were just a little ways down the road from his house, where there is a clearing. We ate at the diner/bar that he would go to every night and asked the waitresses if they knew him or had talked with him. We weren't able to find anyone that knew him that night, we were looking for some good stories/memories.

Not only can I break dance, I can now ride my bike without training wheels!!!!

Today is the best day ever!! I learned to ride my bike without training wheels!! Because I had ridden my bike so much since I got it, I needed a new back tire. So mom and dad went to different stores to try to find one that would fit my extra small tire.. they don't carry them in the stores I guess, I'm pretty sure that Santa Clause would have been able to find one. But my mom and dad had to order one on the internet and dad promised me that as soon as the tire came in the mail that he would teach me how to ride my bike without training wheels.. I got so excited that I started to bug my mom and dad everyday asking if the tire had come in the mail yet. It finally came and I was so excited. Finally the new tire came and mom put the tire on and then dad started to try to help me ride and get my balance. I was already pretty much balancing on my bike, even with training wheels. I was able to pick it up in about 30 minutes and only fell twice! I am so proud of myself and I'm pretty sure that mom and dad are super excited for me... now all I want to do is ride my sweet red bike around and show everyone how cool I am! This really is the best day ever... oh yeah and I'm 5 now because I know how to ride a bike, so not only did I jump ahead by 2 years, I learned to ride by big boy bike without training wheels.. I'm a pretty cool kid!

My name is Boston and I'm a professional Break dancer!

Mom did my hair pretty cool, I sat in the mirror for about 2 minutes looking at myself and smiling.. then about 10 minutes later I went back to the mirror again to make sure I hadn't messed up my awesome hair.


Here I am acting like I'm so cool! When mom asks me to smile for the camera and show off some of my awesome break dancing moves, I just roll my eyes at her. She is so LAME sometimes, always wanting to take pictures of me doing cool stuff like this. I should start charging her!


Here I am demonstrating my killer floor combo.. I get on all fours and stick my butt in the air.. swing my right leg around and then I end up in the opposite direction that I started out in. I really should enter a competition, I would kill'em with this move! FO SHO!!!


When I get sick of picture I just give mom this gross growling face that makes me look like I'm going to attack her. She usually backs off after I throw this face at her, I think she's a little scared of me.... just the way I want it MWAHAHAHAHA!!!


I got a little tired of break dancing, I really need to work on getting some new moves and new combos... To clear my mind and get my creative juices flowing, I jump on the air climber and go to town... it's a great way to think and burn calories at the same time.. and check out my glut's!! BURN baby BURN!!

I'm a big 6 month old girl!!

I am half-way to being a big 1 year old today!!! I can't believe that I'm 6 months old! It's pretty exciting, when I woke up today I felt bigger! I have been soooo happy today, giggling and laughing and playing with my brother, it's been the best day ever. I can roll all the way over on bellies, I get kinda mad when that happens because mamma makes me work so hard to roll back over onto my back again. I reach for toys that are really really far away and somehow wiggle all the way over to them like an inch worm, on my back and on my belly.

Hanging out, being silly, making memories

This is a combination of pictures from mid May the 11th through the 30th. We were just hanging out, getting ready for the day.

I'm 5 months old today!!

Haha - the face that she's pulling in this picture makes me laugh so hard!

Scarlett turned 5 months old today!! We had a busy day! I got cookie all over myself today and so mamma had to give me tubbies. I love my tubbies and today I made a real big mess all over the floor and the mirror and the counter, there was water everywhere!! After tubbies I had some bottles and then a nap and I didn't wake up too happy, good thing mamma and dadda were there to help me feel better on my 5 month birthday! My big brother Boston was really nice to me today too.. We got to watch some spongebob together and he even gave me loves on mamma and dadda's bed. He's the bestest big brother!

Scarlett's Baby Blessing

This blessing dress/outfit was mine and even the little dolly was mine. My mom cleaned it up and had whitened it so that it looked great. My grandma Mildon had given my mom this dress for me to be blessed in, along with the shoes. My mom has pictures of me just like this and so I thought it would be fun to take pictures of Scarlett in the same outfit with the same dolly in basically the same pose. Thanks mom for going to all this work for us today.. and for everything that you helped us out with for the blessing!!

Today was rather interesting... in fact, I think that they should make a comedy about it entitled 'the blessing day' or something like that haha. We woke up early and were early to church, come to find that we were at the wrong church. Andy and I walked around the church looking for out Bishop to sign some papers and get some information for the blessing. We found out that our ward had moved and we hadn't heard about it. Since I've been working on Sundays we've not been to church in a while and during that time the ward has split twice and moved locations. So we drove to three other churches before deciding that it was too late and basically hopeless to find the right church for the blessing. Andy and my dad went to locate the correct church and we stayed at the third church to stay for sacrament with the kids (Jess and Shelley, me and my mom and the kids). During sacrament Jess left with Miriam - and we later found them in the parking lot with Miriam hunched over looking like she was going to throw up. Shelley found a plastic bag to carry around with her in case she threw up in the car on the ride back to our house or during the blessing. We then also came to the realization that I didn't have a car to get home, because Andy and my dad had taken our car to go search for the correct church. My mom didn't have the keys to her car because my dad had them with him. So we all pilled into Jess and Shelley's Suburban and headed for our house. On the way to our house Andy and my dad passed us. So we turned around to find out what had happened and to let them know that we were all in the car with Jess and Shelley. Come to find out that Andy and my dad had gone to about every church in the stake and finally went back to our street to see if anyone was home. They found a neighbor that was home and asked where our ward now met. They found out that the church we are supposed to go to now is about 3 to 4 miles east of our house (totally didn't make any sense). They talked to the bishop and he said that he could do the blessing in his office while the other church meetings went on. So we all followed Andy to the correct church and made it there by like 10:30 am. Scarlett was then officially blessed and we laughed about the entire morning on our way to the correct church.. thinking of ways we could turn it into one of those church comedy movies. Laughing about the whole thing made it a lot less stressful that's for sure. Andy and I felt so bad about everything, so it was good to know that everyone was able to see the humor in it all.

We finally made it to our house and had some brunch - omletts and pancakes.. mmm it was nice to visit with everyone and relax while the kids played. The rest of the day was spent relaxing... I played Operation with Boston a couple of times after his nap, he had tubbies, watched Madagascar and then it was pretty much time for bed. What a busy crazy day!! Scarlett will have the most amazing blessing story ever, haha! Happy blessing day little girl :)