Catch Up and Cousin Weekend

 Whew! What a crazy couple of weeks. Floors are finally done downstairs, and they look great!

Jack had a fun 4th birthday party. It was kinda overshadowed by everything that happened right around then, but the kids loved playing on all the toys at the YMCA!

After that, we headed to Nevada to see baby Haydn and to Utah for grandma's funeral. 

It was nice to see my folks and catch up with a bunch of my cousins, but I wish it could have been for a different reason. Here are some of my cousins and brothers with our children. 

Then, we had a little bit of time to get the house put back together, catch up at work, and I had homework to do for my grad program, which started the same weekend everything else occurred. 

We had another busy weekend this past weekend, keeping Tommy and Sam while Lesa and Colin went on a little trip. We tried to keep the boys busy....Friday night, they destroyed the house and climbed all over Mike. 

 Saturday, we decided on the game plan of lots of activities outside to keep the house intact. Luckily, the weather was gorgeous. We started with a visit to see the farm animals.

 Then, we drove up Hwy 2 to "the beach," which was really a bank along the Skagit river at Rasar State Park, a great little park that never seems to be crowded. The boys started with playing in the sand.

 However, then they realized there was this awesome, really big mud puddle left over from a storm, and in they went, pants, jackets and all. We did get shoes and socks off at least. It was about 65 degrees, and I'm sure the water was cold, but they didn't care.

 We had a picnic lunch and played at the playground, right there at the park as well (after we got into dry, clean clothes anyway).

 Here's the only quiet time of the whole weekend on the drive.

 We stopped at the mall on the way home. Then, at home we cooked hotdogs and marshmallows on the fire for dinner and played outside until bedtime!

 On Sunday, we continued the out-of-the-house plan with a trip up to Skykomish to ride the mini-trains.

 After that, we had a picnic lunch around the Skykomish River, and then the boys threw rocks into the water forever. Then, we drove home, where we immediately went to the park for a little more playtime before coming home for pizza and an after dinner movie! The weekend was full and exhausting, but the boys had fun!

Whew!

Easter and Friday Harbor #1

First off, some Easter pictures. I can't help but look at at this time of year. We had to take some pictures of Jack and his bunny, of course. Here's Easter #1 in 2011:

Easter #2 in 2012:

 Easter #3 in 2013:

 Easter #4 in 2014:

 And, Easter this year, #5 in 2015:

 Here's our newest family picture. I love how Aspen snuck into the picture on the side there:

 On Monday, we set our for our mini-vacation, with Mike not feeling very well. We stopped in Skagit county to see some tulips. It was chilly, but as always, the flowers were gorgeous:

 Jack enjoyed stomping in all the mud puddles he could find. Thank goodness for rain boots.

 Jack and daddy ran around in the fields to work off some energy:

We took the 2:40 ferry and arrived in Friday Harbor about 4:00pm. Since Mike was tired, we headed straight to the B&B, but did go back out for a brief bite to eat before an early bedtime. 

On Tuesday, Mike was worse, so we ended up spending two hours at the medical clinic getting him checked out...borderline pneumonia and lots of prescription meds. Jack, who's not good at waiting, wanted to go, so I spent most of this time driving him randomly around the island until we could go pick Mike up again. After that, we did go out to Lime Kiln state park. We'd heard you could sometimes see whales here, though our B&B host had scoffed and told us there was really on a 1% chance we'd see anything. But, we bought some sandwiches and figured we'd have a picnic lunch and let Jack play if nothing else. However, we were lucky as a pod of Orca whales was going by in the waters below just as we arrived. It was really cool to be able to stand on shore and see the whales going by while eating our lunch. 

 The scenery and views were quite impressive as well. It was a nice day, weather wise, and there were lots of boats coming to look at the whales. There was also a lighthouse from 1919 at the point. Jack and I walked over to it, but Mike was having trouble breathing even with a small hike, so he waited behind. Turns out you couldn't go in the lighthouse or anything, but we were able to see the whales one last time as they rounded the point and disappeared, and the scenery was quite amazing.

After that, we stopped briefly at Jackson beach. Jack was so excited that we were going to "his beach." He says he's happy to share his beach, but he's claimed it. He did all his favorite things: throwing stuff in water, digging in sand, and playing with the driftwood. Mike, who's really not feeling well, sat on the sand and tried to enjoy it.

By four o'clock, we gave up and headed back to the hotel, where Mike was in bed by 7pm. Jack and I had a quick dinner in the room that we picked up from the local grocery store and then he went to bed. I've been waiting almost two hours for these pictures to upload from the not so stellar internet here. I really hope Mike feels better tomorrow, so we can enjoy our last day here better. Still, we had some good moments today...It's so hard to be sick when you are traveling.