Portland Trip

After seeing Seattle, we headed down to Portland. I am terrible at taking pictures so you will just have to take my word on some of this.

I saw my long lost best friend Kimber. I have known Kimber since the beginning of time. She says since age 3, but I can't remember that far back so it might as well be the beginning of time. I miss her. I try to get her to move back to Utah everytime I see her. It never works. We went shopping and out of hot chocolate the night we left to come home.

We also saw Nate long lost college buddy Mark, and family. Love these guys too. We don't see enough of them, but when ever we do it's great. Nate and Mark run off to get in trouble and I get to relax and chat or take a walk with Heather. Always a treat.

Best of all we got to see my brother Mike. He and Cat moved up there a year or so ago. I would try to talk him into coming home, but they seem to really like it there.
We went to the zoo.
We fed the birds at the zoo. Kind of fun, and kind of scary. These birds are pretty aggressive and would steal the cup of nectar if you didn't hold on tight.
We went to Voodoo Donuts. We got a Memphis Mafia (banana chocolate and peanut butter fritter) Double Bubble (bubble gum flavored) Bacon Maple Bar (with real bacon on top) and the Voodoo Doll. The doll had a pretzel stick though it's heart and was filled with red jelly, so it looked like it was bleeding when you ate it. Delicious. If you are ever in Portland, you should go to Voodoo Donuts.

Mike and Cat also took us to a great local hamburger spot. And by local I mean then get all of there ingredients locally. It was delicious.

Seattle Trip

In February we took a roadtrip to the Northwest. We started in Seattle with Nate's family. I am more then a little embarrassed to say it, but this was the first time I have been back since our wedding. Nate has been back a few times, but something always came up and I couldn't go. Plus, the family reunions were usually somewhere other then Seattle. We had a great time.

Here are some of the highlights:

We took the ferry from Seattle to Port Angeles to see Nate's sister. Then went to some really cool tide pools and ran around on the beach.




Going snowboarding at Steven's Pass. I know you can't tell from the picture, but we left the kids with the in-laws and spent the day snowboarding. It was my only time out this season. We had so much fun together. Nate even taught me how to rail slide and do some jumps. So it was probably my best day snowboarding, ever.
We also went to a neat little reptile museum. There were a ton of cool snakes, including a lot of very venomous ones. They only let us hold the non-dangerous boas and pythons. Trey was a little to lovey with them and we had to put them away before he squeezed them to death.

Volcanoes

I have a lot of catching up to do. I haven't really blogged much this year. I am hoping to start up again and catch up on the year. So here is the first post of many.

The boys and i made volcanoes the other day. vinegar, baking soda and food coloring. They LOVED it. I can be a fun mom sometimes.
We did this because we went to Yellowstone the week before (I'll post about that later). They thought the geysers were volcanoes, and they are related so I didn't correct them. Plus volcano was easier for them to pronounce then geyser.

A Child's Prayer

The boys like to say the prayer at mealtimes lately. It usually goes like this:

Trey
Dear Heavenly Father, mumble mumble day mumble, my birthday, eight nine ten, amen.

Smith
Heaven Father, Father, Father, Heavenly Father, Father, men.

kids and their questions

Today we passed a fire engine with it lights and sirens going. Trey asked if it was daddy. I said yes, even though it wasn't, but Nate was at work, so I figured it was close enough. Trey said something about daddy has to go fast to help people at the fire. I said yes and he was good.

Smith then started to ask questions "daddy fire man?" - yes "Daddy engine?" - yes "daddy bike?" - no "Daddy fire man?" - yes, fireman "Daddy fire man?" - yes sweetie "It's daddy engine" - yup daddies engine "Daddy fire man?" ....and so it went for the next 10 minutes.

Then Trey, clearly sick of hearing it says "Daddy's a fireman at work. okay? It's enough. Leave mom alone." Smith's questions kept coming but I love that Trey had my back.

Nate's New Baby

Nate's new baby arrived Monday morning at 11:10am. Weighting aprox. 4043 lbs and is 17 ft 3 in long. It is a '54 Buick Roadmaster. Congratulations to the proud papa.
More pics to come. (p.s. it's the one on top)

Bud Video

This is what I have for Bud's video.

Hey Family,
Let me know soon if I really messed anything up, otherwise, this is likely how it will appear on Wednesday.