Trip to WA: Playing with Cousins and Trip Home

Here are just a few pictures of the kids playing in the backyard.  It was fun to have the kids hang out with cousins that we don't get to see very often (and the animals they have were an added bonus!)  I think we were there for less than 5 minutes when Ashlee came to me holding a guinea pig.

Somehow "Fondue Night" didn't make it into a previous post.  I think this was Sunday night...

We left early Wednesday morning on our long trek back home.  At one of the rest stops along the way, Rob saw this phone booth. Now tell me, when's the last time you saw a functioning phone booth?  The kids each wanted their turn...

Thanks, Tim and Heather and family, for a wonderful vacation!  Washington is beautiful and I just might have caught myself occasionally thinking...I could live here.

Trip to WA: Pike Place Market & Seattle Aquarium

On Tuesday my parents left to fly back to Arizona.  Please excuse my swollen-ness.  I think I lost 3 pounds of pure water weight when we got home.  Plus it was early in the morning after a long, toss-n-turn kind of night...

Since Rob hadn't ever been to Seattle, we wanted to do some touristy things while we were there.  We knew the kids wouldn't last long in the city, so Heather offered to keep the older ones with her and take them to a lake near their house while Rob, Trevor and I went to Seattle.

After being there for just a few minutes, I was SO glad we didn't have all the kids.  It was pretty crowded and we did lots of walking.  We wandered around Pike Place Market and found some of the place's icons...

The Pike Place Market's unofficial bronze mascot, Rachel...

The Original Starbucks...

Since we had Trevor with us, we thought he would love going to the Seattle Aquarium.  We were right.  It was so fun to have just him.  It was hard to keep up with him...he was so excited, running from exhibit to exhibit, yelling telling us what he saw!

Making our way down to the Aquarium...

Luckily, we found a parking garage that had an elevator back up to the level where we were parked.  I don't think I would have made it back up those stairs.

Aaahhh, an octopus got me!

It was really hard to get a good picture of Trevor.  He wouldn't look at the camera or stop long enough...

Cute seal...

One of Trevor's favorites was this little seahorse...

Alright, time for a story.  Remember how I said Trevor finds the plastic toy animals anywhere he goes?  Well, we left Boise on day 1 with Trevor in tears because he wanted to take the killer whale and giant squid that he found at our friends' house with him in the car.  Of course, as you are leaving the aquarium, you exit through the gift shop.  The first thing Trevor saw was this little octopus.  It was only $1.99 and I thought "perfect, we'll get out of here without spending a fortune."  Well, as we were heading to the cashier, he spotted some plastic animals in a bin...with a price tag of $7.99-$11.99 per animal.  Then he spotted the stuffed animals...lobsters, octopus, seals, etc.  He was in heaven and I was trying to figure out how we were going to make it out of there without making a huge scene with a tearful boy.  I left with the stroller and Rob tried to slowly coax Trevor out of the store.  They eventually met up with me and he kept asking me through his little tears when we could get the crab and blue whale and giant squid and on and on.  Evidently there was a package of animals and yep, you guessed it. The package had the exact animals in it that we had to tear away from him as we were leaving Boise.  I asked Rob how much it was and he said $11.99.   It had 11 animals in it so I was more than willing to buy it.  Rob went back to the gift shop (and Trevor asked me 50 times...is daddy buying me the animals?)  Of course this story has a happy ending with a little happy boy...

Trip to WA: 4th of July...More Fireworks!

After getting home from Bremerton, we made pizza for dinner and then enjoyed the neighborhood fireworks show. Landon had learned how fun it was to light fireworks from Saturday night and kept asking to light more...little pyro!

Tim and Heather's neighbors went all out in the fireworks department.  Definitely not the same as what we are used to seeing in our neighborhood in Utah (although this year the ones that go up to 150 feet in the air were legal).  We are used to the ones that Landon was lighting but the neighbors brought out the big guns.  I'm pretty sure the show we saw would easily compete with any professional fireworks I've seen.  Each time we thought one of them was lighting off their "finale", bigger and better ones would go off!  I would like to know how much money was spent on them...pretty incredible!  And we got front row seats!

(I would post video but I guess blogger only lets you post two videos per post...  They wouldn't have been as awesome as they were in person, anyway!)

Rob did manage to get a shot of one of the neighbor's garbage the next day. Multiply that times 5 or 6 and you'll get a good idea of what we saw.

Trip to WA: Ferry to Bremerton

After a relaxing Sunday, we drove to Seattle to take a ferry ride to Bremerton on Monday, July 4th.  It was about an hour ride one way on the ferry to Bremerton.  Originally, we were going to park in Seattle and walk on the ferry but we were running a little late and just decided to take the cars on with us.  It ended up being a nice thing to have so we didn't have to haul everything around with us in Bremerton.

The kids learned a trick that seagulls love pretzels, Doritos and Cheetos... 

Poor Ashlee got a "Seagull Souvenir" (look closely at the white spots on her shirt)...

Views of Mt. Rainier from the ferry...

We walked around the town a little bit.  I really liked this fish with a fishing pole reeling a guy in from across the intersection...

They had these rock sculptures everywhere that the kids had fun playing on (oh, and apparently Rob did, too)...

Showing brotherly love or fighting over who gets to sit in the sculpture...you decide.

Near the Puget Sound Navy Museum and USS Turner Joy...

We ate fish 'n chips for lunch and then found a water play area that Tim and Heather had been to when they visited Bremerton before. They had these three huge volcano looking things that shot water from the top.

We came prepared with swimsuits for everyone except Trevor. Good thing I had a change of clothes in the diaper bag for him so he could join in the fun.

Trevor and his buddy, "Baby Gavin"...



Rachel, Landon, Spencer, Ashlee, and Levi...


Beautiful view of Seattle...

Heather and Elizabeth on the ferry back to Seattle...

Trip to WA: Levi's Baptism & Fireworks

My nephew, Levi, was baptized on Saturday, July 2nd.  It was the first time we were able to attend the baptism for a niece/nephew on my side of the family.  We had a brunch at Tim and Heather's with some of their friends and family members from Heather's side.  Heather was in charge of the musical number for the baptism program and asked us if we would join their family singing a medley "Teach a Child/I Love to See the Temple."  I had never heard the arrangement before but it was pretty easy to learn.  My mom accompanied us on the piano and my dad, Tim's family and my family all sang.  It was fun for our family to be a part of the program.

After the baptism, we went to an Indian Reservation to buy some fireworks to take to a family party at Heather's moms house.  It was fun to see some of Heather's family that I knew from BYU or had met at their wedding...14 years goes by fast!

We called this the launch pad.  The kids had fun with snap-its/poppers and smoke bombs before dark and then the real show began.

Ashlee holding a Roman Candle...

Letting off a Chinese Lantern...

I love pictures of people playing with sparklers. Rob experimented with different settings and shutter speeds...

Such patriotic girls...

Lots of fun for all! A big thanks to Dean and Laura Conway for hosting a fun evening!

Trevor can find these plastic animal toys at pretty much every house he goes to.