Lake Chelan

Love, love, love this pic of Matthew. A rare moment when he's takin' in easy. This was at Lake Chelan where we spent five days with Matthew's friends Tia and Michael and their mom and dad. It's about four hours from our house, but is over the mountains so they have summery weather (which we were craving). I consider it a personal victory that Matthew did not get sunburned (wish I could say that about myself) since the kids hung out in bathing suits, playing in the lake and sand from early morning until late evening.

Good times!!

Play, play and more play

Trying to make their own Lake Chelan

Michael and his momma

Future football star??

Fun in the Sun

The phrase "two peas in a pod" comes to mind

The daddies took Matthew and Tia kayaking. Evidently Matthew found it quite relaxing and was doing the head bob about half way through the trip.

Beautiful Lake Chelan Sunset

Our last night of vacation they had fireworks for Fourth of July and we spent the evening blowing bubbles, rolling down the hill and just playing around waiting for it to get dark outside. All three kids made it to the end of the show. It was quite humorous to listen to them say "I like that one best, no that one, no that one". Very cute!

On your mark, get set, GO!!

On the way home, someone at the resort suggested that we go north through the North Cascades Park. We were told it would only add an hour or two to our ride home. We left Lake Chelan at 2pm and got home at midnight. It was worth it though. Beautiful scenery and saw some places that we're definately going to go back and visit. And we got to see some snow in July! Great vacation!

Hey! Long Time, No See (or Hear)

I have our blog as our homepage on one of our computers, but I guess that I really never paid much attention to it until I looked at the date of our last post the other day. Yikes! May 28th! I guess it's been a while. I looked at all of the pics I have and I actually have to do 3 separate posts because it won't all fit on one. So you'll see why it's been a while, we've been a bit busy.

Arrrggghhh Matey! It was that time of year again in June. This was our 4th time to the Maritime Pirate Parade and Blessing of the Fleet. We had a great time at the parade with our friends The Sobba's and The Guy's. It seems to me that the parade gets bigger and bigger each year. But we still manage to stake out the same spot to see all of the action (we just have to get there a little earlier each year).

Campsite Guy/Sobba/Taylor

Arrrrgghhh!!

My camera lens got a little smudgy before this shot, but I thought it looked kind of neat.

The next day was the Blesssing of the Fleet and it was a little drier than last year when it poured. There were many more boats than I think were expected. I always find it amazing that there aren't any collisions on the water with that many vessels out there.

Waiting for the procession (or parade as Matthew called it) to start



Leaving the church

Heading down Rosedale

For any of you Deadliest Catch fans, the Lisa Marie was in one of the earlier seasons of the show

Just hanging out in the straw

In Skanskie Park, there were large bales of straw for people to sit on and after a while the kids stacked them all up and made a fort to play in. It was quite a hit. Afterwards, when the clean up crew started arriving, Matthew had a ball helping roll the bales to the trucks to be loaded up and hauled away.

Happy Birthday Matthew!

Who knew that one phone call could change your life forever? Not us. It has been four years since that fateful day in May. We never imagined that we could love someone so much and that our lives could be so rich. We love you Matthew. Happy Birthday Big Boy!!

My parents were able to visit for Matthew's birthday this year. It was perfect timing since my dad's birthday was on the day of Matthew's party with all of his friends. So we had two birthday cakes this year- Cars and Star Wars. We had a wonderful time and Matthew could be hear several times a day saying "Come play with me Gramps". They spent a lot of time playing with Matthew's new favorite toy, Legos. I think Gramps was tired out by the end of the trip. Matthew also learned very quickly to check Grammy's bag every day for a new surprise. We all had a great time and look forward to seeing Grammy and Gramps again soon.

Matthew's party was a blast. We had it at Jump in Gig Harbor. It's basically a warehouse full of bouncy houses. Lots of fun for both kids and adults. I'm just glad no one had a camera handy when I got in the bounce house with the kids : ) Matthew had a great time with all of his favorite friends all in one room together.

Jump!!

A Weekend of Firsts

It's been an exciting weekend for Matthew. He had a couple of big "firsts".

(I just thought this was a cute shot of Matthew)

On Friday, we visited our friends The Guys and had a sleep over with Matthew's friend, Jonas. The boys had a ball and loved swimming in the pool, but mostly just wanted to play with toys in the hotel room. We have run into this before when we've gone to the Great Wolf Lodge with Jonas and his family. It's funny that you go through all this time, effort and expense to drive down to GWL to entertain them and they're just happy hanging out and playing cars and trucks. Although I have to say that I think that their favorite wheeled object this time around was the luggage cart.

Last nights big adventure was Matthew's first camping trip. We chose a very exotic location- our back yard. I'm still waiting to making a final judgement on the success of this one (the boys are still sleeping as I write). We made a fire (after multiple attempts) and roasted marshmallows. And then we read bedtime stories by flashlight. One thing I learned is that you never realize how noisy your back yard is at night.

(Sorry this pic is a little blurry, but it's from the iphone)

Well got to run for now. I'm sure I'll be getting a call from the boys in the wilderness for breakfast soon.

Happy Belated Mother's Day to all!

Bunny pics 2011

I pulled out Matthew's bunny pictures from last year and looking at him thought that he really hasn't changed much since last year. I think we're past the point of any big physical changes from year to year. So I honestly expected this year's pics not to look much different. However, it's amazing how much change there really is when you compare them side-by-side. He really has lost all of his "babyness" and is turning into quite a boy.

Matthew's Latest Adventure

I'm posting this one for the grandparents....

Snoqualmie Snow

Hey all. Not much new to post, but I thought I'd share some pics from our recent trip to the mountains. We had initially planned on doing a little sledding, which was fun, but decided that the tubing was the way to go. Sorry, no shots of the action since we were busy playing rather than taking pics. It was so beautiful in the mountains and we had LOTS of snow to throw around and pretty much that's all Matthew wanted to do about 75% of the time. It was lots of fun and we will definately be back next year, maybe for some skiing/snowboarding???

Don't eat the yellow snow!!!!

Here's a few videos....

This one ended up being a two parter....

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Happy Belated Birthday Daddy and Blasts from the Past

Happy birthday to the best daddy and husband in the whole wide world. Glad you had a little help blowing out all those candles this year ; )

I recently found a folder on our computer with pics from Scott's iphone. There are so many cute ones of Matthew. I can't believe how much he's grown up. I wish he could stay my baby boy forever.



At the Mariners game. Can you believe that blonde, blonde hair?

So tiny.

In Hawaii

No teeth.

Snow Day

Growing up in Michigan, I am accustomed to winter weather, especially the snow. Someone recently posted this on Facebook that really sums it up for Michiganders...







It has been a bit of a change for me going from "life goes on despite the snow" vs. snowmageddon when two snowflakes fall here in Washington. Hence, the great Pemco commercial...








All that being said, this last storm in February was a pretty good one.

Yep, that's snow, not fog. For those of you who have been to our house, normally you can see Puget Sound out our back door, instead of this. Matthew, however, was in heaven. We spent most of the day outside making snow angels, throwing snowballs and sledding down our side hill and freezing our little tootsies off. Unfortunately, it only lasted about 48 hours. So anytime it starts to rain now, he says "maybe it will snow again". I think he's out of luck. So it looks like we might be heading to the mountains in the next few weeks so he can get another fix of the white stuff. In the meantime, he's some clips from our "snow day"...