Category Archives: avery

Santa and His Reindeer

We returned to the Cougar Mountain Zoo for their annual Reindeer Festival and to see Santa. The kids had a lot of fun. Layla was completely unfazed by Santa. Silas insisted on wearing his elf hat and seeing if Santa could “make it magic so he could fly.” He was starstruck and would have chatted with Santa all day if he could have. Avery and Kieron played it cool. So far Avery is the only one “in” on the big secret. Kieron is asking a few more questions these days, but our answers were satisfactory to him.

Layla was all business with the man in red. We’ll see how she does next year.

Feeding the reindeer
     

The cougar looking all regal

The tigers got very close, and one even sprayed right in front of us.

Just the boys

The wolves really liked Silas. In fact, we’re pretty sure they thought he looked delicious. They weren’t even near the fence when we walked up. Then one noticed him. Pretty soon another joined him and they followed Silas the perimeter of the fence as he ran up and down exclaiming “look, I made some friends!”

Silas was feeling pretty wild on this particular day.

Meanwhile:

“Look! I’m picking his nose!”

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Maui 2016

Wow, we have a ton of fun pictures from our recent trip to Hawaii. I am well aware that I am posting way too many, but I just don’t have the time or cut throat attitude to cull (or even organize) these anymore than I already have. Obviously we had a great time. We were in Hawaii. In December. With a bunch of little kids. We kept it simple and mainly stuck to the pool and the beach. We exhausted the littles each day so they slept deeply at night. We ate a lot of donut holes, sandwiches & fish tacos. We did have one (successful) fancy dinner at Roy’s. So without further ado, here’s what we were up to on our vacation:

My entourage

At the first hotel


We overlapped one day with our friends/neighbors. Here is Avery & Hamza together on Maui.

Heading from our first hotel to the timeshare

Silas loved his tatoo!
        

I don’t know why, but I love her expression here.                         

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Baby piggies

These boys devour Hula Pie like a pack of hungry wolves!

While his friends made snow angels at home…

Kieron loved the waves. I imagine him saying “come and get me!” here.

We love snow cones!
  

Hide-and-seek

My pokemon!

A little morning reading

Learning how to crack a coconut

We nick-named this bird Captain Ahab (notice his peg leg). He was a regular at the kiddie pool.

Jonathan and Avery before heading off to the slide races. Jonathan won a free coffee one day.

In our room

“Wow, that was a great trip! Time to catch up on our homework before we get back!”

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Thanksgiving 2016

We had a fun Thanksgiving in Pullman this year. Grammy & Papa spent the majority of Turkey Days in Texas alone, but now that they’re living in Washington again, we all got to be together. Here are all six of the cousins together for the first time:

Heading out on our first long car ride as a family of six. All went well!

The men

The guest of honor

Picking apples

All bundled up for a walk downtown

Silas really wanted one of these for Christmas

The ladies in the family

On Friday we all went bowling

The cheerleaders

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November

November was another busy month, and on top of that my computer broke. It took us a while to sort everything out and eventually replace it, so I blame being almost two months behind on blogging on this. Expect a flurry of posts in the coming days. Here’s some of what we were up to leading up to Thanksgiving:


These two sweethearts have been joining me at night when I put Layla to bed. They sing songs with me and are becoming quite familiar with The Sound of Music soundtrack! I’m in heaven!

When he comes home from school in the afternoons, sometimes he likes to do this:

Happy girl!

For Veteran’s Day Kieron had to bring this star to class with the name of a veteran on it. He proudly chose Grandpa. 🙂   

Almost time for Turkey Day!

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Snoqualmie Falls

We had a ton of rain at the end of October/beginning of November and the Snoqualmie river was raging. We took the kids to see the falls (only a couple miles from our home). The hike down was considerably easier than in years past with a young Silas. The boys were sprinting ahead of us checking out all the cool plants and trees. And Layla was happy as can be on Jonathan’s back.

Me and my boys

Jonathan and his little girl

The falls


  

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