Sunday, May 8, 2011

Mother's Day

I just wanted to wish all the wonderful mothers that I know a very happy Mother's Day. Especially to my beautiful mother who I love and cherish and aspire to be like.



Current Mother's Day:


Mother's Day 3 years ago. Where has the time gone?


My fabulous Mother's Day gift:




The loves of my life:






Olympic Peninsula and National Forest

My parents came to visit the middle of April so we decided to set out an adventure to see the Olympic Peninsula and National Forest. We mapped out our journey and set off. We decided to drive all of the way around the Forest and hit a couple other stops along the way. The first day we drove up and had dinner in Port Townsend at this fifties diner and stayed the night in Sequim (by Port Angeles for you Twilight fans). The next day we made several stops the first was at the Ranger Station. Never in all of my ranger station visits have I seen one that had such a neat hands on learning section for the kids.










After the ranger station we headed to Forks and La Push.




As you can see Jaxon is totally excited to be visiting Forks.





We made several stops in forks. First was to the visitor center and then we checked out a couple places around town. This is Bella's truck in the book and the next one down is from the movies.





Taylin was really liking Jacob.






Bella's house from the book. Ya, it is kind of weird someone actually lives in this house. I don't know about you but I wouldn't want my house as part of a tour and people taking pictures in front of it all day.


This is Ruby Beach it has really beautiful sea stacks.














Some other highlights from the trip were beach 4 and the Hoh Rainforest. The Hoh Rainforest get 12 feet of rain a year. Can you even imagine? The Amazon Rainforest only gets 9 feet a year.






My kids are totally attracted to Kelp, it doesn't matter what beach we go to they always manage to find a big Kelp to carry with them.




I love this one of my parents and the kids.


We really missed Dave while we were out sightseeing but when duty calls, he must go.


You can count yourself lucky if you made it this far that my camera died before the trip was over and I haven't gotten the rest of the pictures off my parents camera yet. I am really looking forward to summer to go camping this summer and seeing more of this area. I can't believe that I live in such a beautiful place. There aren't many places where you can go from a big city like Seattle to such beautiful beaches and rain forest and breath taking mountains in a couple hours drive.

Being 8 is great

Jaxon turned 8 April 7th 2011. The morning started off with our family birthday tradition, breakfast in bed. But any of you that know Jaxon, knows that he could hardly wait. By the time we came in with his breakfast he was dressed and waiting under his covers for us to come.

He opted to eat his breakfast downstairs with everybody else.

This year I turned 30 and Dave made me a beautiful cake. It was a cake in the shape of a 30, it got such rave reviews that he decided he would make Jaxon's cake this year. Jaxon is into Pokemon big time so Dave picked one of his favorite characters and fashioned the cake after it. I couldn't tell you which one it is but it is was a smashing success. This is before we frosted it what an amazing dad.











Jaxon is one of the loves of my life. He is such a smart and loving boy. He tries to be kind to everyone he knows and doesn't have a mean bone in his body. He love reading, writing, playing Pokemon and building things. I have loved having Jaxon in our family for the past eight years and look forward to many more fun years to come.

Seattle City Passes

A couple of months ago we bought some Seattle City Passes, if you have never used a city pass I strongly recommend them. They have them for most all of the big cities in the United States. It is the cheapest and easiest way to see all of the most famous attractions in that city. We made it to almost all of the attractions on the Seattle City Passes. The next several post are dedicated to our 2 week long trip around the city.
Up first is the lovely Space Needle. Probably Seattle's most famous landmark. I remember riding up the Space Needle when I was little. We also went as a family a couple years ago when I was pregnant with Kinley. For those of you that have never been there you take a really neat elevator ride of about 600 ft. to the observation deck, there is also a revolving restaurant right below that. This visit was rainy and really windy up at the observation deck, I was pretty scared to go outside but Dave took the kids and walked all the way around. I seriously felt like I might blow away up there (outside that is).