Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Gage is FIVE!!!!!

My big boy turned 5 today, FIVE!!! 

Here is his fun birthday interview:


What are your favorite toys to play with?
Shooter guns, hot wheels and race car track, legos, and Love Letters (a card game)

What are you favorite foods to eat?
Barbecue chips, and that's it! 


What is your favorite color?
Black

Where is your favorite place to go?
School and Red Robin. Oh, and Great Wolf Lodge and Sunriver.


What makes you happy?
Funny things like America's Funniest Videos, balloons 

What makes you sad?
Scary guys, monsters, popping balloons


Who are your friends?
Michael, Luke, Dad, Mi Mi

What are your favorite shows to watch?
Funniest Home Videos, Hot Wheels shows on YouTube, Angry Birds Toons


What books do you like to read?
The Big Guy Took My Ball, and There's a Bird on My Head
(pretty much any Mo Willems books.)

What songs do you like to sing?
He Sent His Son, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star


What is your favorite thing about having a birthday?
Giving cake to my friends

What are you looking forward to most about being 5?
Playing with Maisey at her school
(going to kindergarten)


Some things I wanted to record:

* He could eat a whole bag of Lays Barbecue chips every day if I would let him. Mean old mom only lets him have a handful for lunch.

* He always talks about his 1400 brothers and sometimes blames things on them when we gets in trouble. And he's also obsessed with twins and wants twin babies so bad. 

* He can do the rope swing at our community pool now, which is a big deal to him!

* He loves to eat ketchup and cheese sandwiches without the crust.

* He doesn't like wearing jeans or any clothes with buttons! 

* He is getting more and more stubborn, which is hard to believe.

* He is phasing out trains, and usually plays with his hot wheels cars instead.

* He LOVES to be outside. Riding bikes, digging in the dirt, swinging, scooping rocks, or playing with the neighborhood kids. This boy belongs outside!

Happy Birthday Gage! We sure love you!

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Happy Birthday DAD!

Happy Birthday Dad! 

This would have been your last year in your 50's. 

I wish you were here so Maisey could read you stories, so you could build Legos with Gage, and so you and Miley could snuggle together! She really gives the best snuggles! 



Instead, we brought you a balloon and some tulips. We will tell stories about you and enjoy reminiscing about all of the fun memories you helped create! 

We miss you so much. 

Wishing you were here to celebrate with us.

Monday, April 21, 2014

Easter

We got home from our Washington trip very late the night before Easter. Which means when you go to bed super late and have 8 am church there won't be a lot of time for Easter fun!

Maisey's basket

Gage's basket

Miley's basket

The Easter Bunny color coded the egg hunt this year. Miley's were green and hidden pretty easily.

Maisey's were pink

and Gage's were blue. 

Miley was full of loves so I let her have a little candy.

She loved chowing down on Robin Eggs

Until I took them away so she could get ready for church. Then a holy fit ensued!

We made it to church in their new Easter outfits!

Love these three so much!

Shaun spoke in Sacrament and I would love to tell you that he did a great job, but with three kids and one who needed to go to the bathroom in the middle of it, I didn't get to hear it. :(

Post church individual pics:




After church the kids were able to open their eggs. The big kids were so excited to find some money and treats inside!

We all took loooong naps in the afternoon.

Then we headed to the airport to pick Grammy up. The kids loved playing with the pay phones and asked why on earth anybody would pay money to call someone when they could just pull out their own phones to make their call! Ha!

Happy Easter everyone!

Washington Trip

We headed up to the Olympic Peninsula to visit some old friends from BYU! We were there for 48 hours and packed in sooooo many fun things. We were seriously on the go the whole time! Here's the receap:

THURSDAY:

Everyone cheered when we crossed the bridge into Washington! It wasn't too bad of a drive and we left at the perfect time so we were between major cities during rush hour!

Once we arrived at the Noble's house we put kids to bed and the adults got our game on! When we went to bed Miley woke up and was ready to party. I think I got a total of one hour of sleep that night.

FRIDAY:
The kids (read: Shaun) played Disney Infinity in the morning while the mom's cleaned up breakfast and got ready for the day.

We headed to a neighboring Norwegian themed town and explored all morning.

We hit up this amazing bakery and we all had a hard time choosing just one treat!

Doughnuts, cookies, and friends are the best way to start the day!

Checking out the viking ship mural!

We walked down on the docks of the Puget Sound and checked out all of the boats.

The kids kept finding little shells to throw in the water. Gage found this big one and was excited!

He was also excited to find a boat from Alaska, where Aunt Janel lives.

Next we headed to the Poulsbo Aquarium. Miley was checking out the star fish.

Gage liked listening to the ocean in the shells

And Maisey liked the hands-on activities.

Climbing an octopus is so fun until you climb all the way to the top and your brother pushes you off. Not that Maisey would know or anything!

We met up with Andrew on his lunch break and hit up a local Mexican joint. The kids were running wild so we decided to get the food to go and head to a park on the water front.

Miley and Griffen were best buddies!

Our very own Karate Kid!

Maisey had fun being the oldest kid and leading everyone around (aka, being bossy!)

The main reason for our trip (besides to see our friends!) was for Shaun to get his eyes checked. He headed to his appointment that afternoon.

While he was there, Katrina, the kids, and I drove up to Bainbridge Island to check out a park.

Miley crashed hard and slept in the car until it was time to leave the park.

Maisey loved this awesome swing!

And Gage really liked this digger toy.

While we were waiting for Andrew to get home from work the kids and Shaun hit up their hot tub.

I offered to pick up pizzas for dinner that night since Andrew didn't charge Shaun anything for his appointment. Katrina had suggested Costco, so that's where I headed. When I was in line to order I pulled my wallet out to take out my cash (food court doesn't take debit) and realized I had given it all to Shaun earlier in the day so I didn't have to carry my purse around. So I hit up the ATM at Costco and took out 20 bucks. 2 pizzas x $9.95 each = $19.90, right? I ordered the two pizzas and the lady told me my total was $21.53! I totally forgot about sales tax. I tried counting my change and was still way short so I had to only order one pizza. I was super embarrassed that we offered to buy dinner and then didn't even have enough. 

I ended up getting Happy Meals for all of the kids and the adults ate the ONE pizza!

When I called to get the kids' happy meal orders, they talked me into getting some coconut syrup to mix up some dirty dr. peppers. 
When we pulled into town I was really excited when we passed this store. I told Shaun I wanted to check it out and see if they had any fun sodas or anything. When I walked in to get the syrup I felt so awkward. It was totally a liquor store and I felt like a major sinner! Ha!! I walked around for a bit like I knew what I was doing.

I felt even more like a sinner when they bagged my coconut syrup and watermelon soda in paper bags and ID'd me at check out. That was an adventure!

After dinner we went bowling!  
Miley bowled one frame and then she was done.

So I hung with her in the arcade for the next hour, then eventually took her out to the car. Sitting out there in a creepy bowling alley parking lot was not ideal, but better than dealing with a tired, cranky babe!

Once we got home and got kids in bed we watched Pitch Perfect! They hadn't seen it yet, and obviously, we can't get enough of it!

SATURDAY:

We went to the Noble's ward Easter Activity. They frosted cookies, played some games, and went on an Easter Egg Hunt.



It was pouring down rain during the egg hunt, so we helped the kids quickly find eggs so we could head back inside.

The kids were happy were there treats!

After the egg hunt we headed to Fat Schmidty's for lunch! It was this delicious burger joint outside of Port Townsend.

That's about how big our burgers were! YUM!!!

Patrons pin dollar bills to the walls and ceiling of the restaurant and every year they take it down and donate it to the Boy Scouts! Maisey was excited when Shaun gave her one to pin up.

After lunch we headed to the Olympic Game Farm!!

Watch your fingers! Zebras bite!

We bought two loaves of bread to feed to the animals. Miley was just interested in eating it herself.

Gage was the only kid who really enjoyed feeding the animals. The llamas were friendly. One baby llama was born right on the trail about 30 seconds before we drove past it. That was an "educational" experience for the kids!

The deer were also pretty friendly. The elk, not so much.

This yak freaked Miley out and she had no interest in feeding anymore of the animals.

Gage had fun feeding the yaks and liked when they stuck their heads in the car. 

We were warned at the beginning that the bison were being a bit ornery that day, and boy were they right! They were toward the end and we didn't have a lot of bread left. They were aggressive and stuck there heads far in the car to try to get bread. I ended up having to take what we had left and throwing it as far as I could so they would go after it so we could drive away. One of them walked right in front of our car and stopped so we couldn't drive anymore. I had a freak out moment when one burped in my face and licked me. We ended up rolling up the windows and getting out of there!

Family Fun!!

We said our good-byes to our friends and hit the road!

We stopped at Red Robin on the way home and decided to double it as Gage's birthday dinner since his birthday was in 5 days! This is the life, apple juice and Frozen!!

The waitress had him stand up on the bench while they sang to him! He thought that was pretty cool!

We were so exhausted when we got home! Sunday afternoon we took a nice loooong nap to help recover from the super fun weekend!