Washington 2012 Day 4

 After breakfast most of us headed straight to the sand hill. It was prefect for jumping contests and rolling down the his.

Even Joseph loved it.

He started up by me and then scooted and slid...

 until he got to the bushes. Then I brought him back to the top (not easy) so he could do it again.

William started a tunnel and gave himself a nice sand-stache

Later after everyone was gone William and I went up to check out the sand cave.

The were some seats carved out of the sand...

 and an awesome view.

It was sprinkling and Joseph was really tired so we started to head back.

 by the time we got to the top of the stairs he was out (and Russ' neck was sore).

Then we ate lunch and then headed to the chapel for the clown and then program.

William had such a good time with his big cousins.

Here is Gracie with the brownies (brown e's) that the clown Glitter Bug brought.

She also let Gracie and Elleigh "pick their noses".

She had some really good tricks and convinced Gracie and William that she was magic.

Here they are using donut seeds (cheerios) and chocolate powder to make...

Chocolate donuts!!!

then she made some seriously awesome balloon animals...and aliens.

not to mention the ballon bracelets and cotton candy.

this represents how most of us were feeling.

 And then she did face painting.

(look at Russ' mouth)

Gracie loved it and Glitter Bug

Joseph with his uncle Erik

These girls had so much fun playing together!

William was mad that it wasn't his entire face.

And Gracie's was just so funny I couldn't look at her without laughing. Needless to say, the clown was awesome.

Then we had a program and my kids sang and danced to Newsies, and I felt extremely proud of them. Then I left to put Joseph down and missed the rest of the program, but I heard it was awesome (as usual).

Washington 2012 Day 3

The next morning we woke up after not actually getting very much sleep (or at least I didn't) because Joseph woke up in the night and ended up in our bed. We never sleep good with kids in my bed. We headed off to our continental breakfast
 walking through the state park.

  It doesn't look like it from this picture but Gracie actually was being pretty sassy that morning and was not very happy. But after she got some breakfast in her she did a lot better. Joseph and I came back earlier than everyone else because he needed a diaper change (or so I thought, he was on antibiotics for most of the trip and it gave him terrible gas sometimes). 

So we sat on the porch for a while waiting for everyone else to come. Joseph sat down on a step and then patted the spot next to him so I scooted over close to him and he shifted his body back and forth settling in contently to the step with a cute little smirk on his face.

 And then my heart exploded. How can such a small thing make me so happy? As we sat there we saw three deer and soon after that Russ, Gracie, and William were back so we decided to take a walk down to the beach. 

And I mean down. Check out all the stairs. I was very sore a lot of this trip, it made me realize that I need to get in shape.

It was a beautiful down at the beach. The water was so so cold and we were all wearing sweaters because it  was nice and cool outside.   

The kids loved throwing rocks in the water, especially Joseph.

Which is exactly what William would have been doing at his age.

 They also love turning over rocks and finding little sea creatures. Joseph was a little bit nervous about holding this little sand crab but he really wanted to.

  Gracie planted a flower right there on the beach. 

 Uh oh, I guess I should have taken his shoes of.

 And nobody loves to get dirty like Gracie does.

Russ loved (and I mean LOVED) finding the sea creatures.

 After a while I was getting tired of standing on the beach and I saw the sand hill and the sand was dry and I thought maybe it was warmer so I went over to it and the sand was nice and warm. As I climbed up it a bit I realized that the flowers there smelled like heaven. They were absolutely gorgeous. 

 So I sat there in the warm sand the smell of these pretty flowers next to me and watched my family plan on the beach. It was probably one of the most relaxing moments of my life.

After a while Joseph got tired of the beach and came up to join me. He had gotten  nearly all of his pants wet and now he was covered in sand so I took him back and got him changed and dried off.

After a while he found a bag of some Ritz crackers and I guess he decided that he knew how to eat it.

 That night all the older grand kids watch the little grand kids so the adults could go out for adult dinner.

  After are yummy dinner in downtown Port Townsend we walked out on the pier laughed a lot and frozen knickers off.  I need to get my hands on the pictures Ted took so I have some of everyone else.

When we got back we found the Gracie had put herself to bed wrapped in a towel. 

 After we got back Lilleigh fell asleep on her way up the stairs

and the next morning when we changed Josephs diaper we saw it was on backwards. I'm thinking one of the nephews changed its diaper.

 It was such a fun day.

Washington 2012 Day 2

The next morning I woke up bright and early but nobody else did. I decided to go for a walk by myself and I'm so glad I did. 

When you walk out the door and across the street this is that what you see.

And then if you walk a little bit further down and to the right, this is what you see. Nothing much, only my dream house!

There was beautiful flowers and greenery everywhere, something that doesn't happen as much in Arizona.

In another direction you come to this bridge it's no longer use by cars and it is over a magnificent gulch. 

You looked down and it's like you're over Ferngully. I knew we would have to explore that, but wouldn't have time to do it that day.

After I walked around the neighborhood and "oooh and ahh"ed to myself over all the gorgeous homes and an landscape I headed back and here I found myself at Kirsten's back door.

Later that day me and Kirsten went on a massive Costco run. And Russ and the kids went exploring in the gulch. And then we were packing up and getting ready to go to Port Townsend. Here's everybody outside getting ready to load up the car.

The kids really made fun out of the steep hill that is their front yard. Gracie called that tree the heart attack tree and when  she would hit it she would dramatically pass out and fall to the ground and then rolled down the hill. She did this over and over again with her cousin Carmen and I couldn't help but laugh every single time.

Then we were off on the beautiful scenic drive to Port Townsend.

We got to Fort Worden the state Park where we were staying. I got out to check in and the kids and Russ saw a doe. Actually I think they saw couple.

Here they are running around and the officers quarters homes are in the background and that's where we would be staying. 

 This is a duplex home we had this whole house and a duplex from the other house next to it. It was such a fun historic place. I would have loved it when I was a kid. The tall pine tree in from had a place where the branches opened up and you could go in and then there were tons of branches and a lot of them low so the kids could climb and climb. It was so awesome. 

Look at those two little cuties up in the window. After that we had all the window shut and told them not to open them anywhere. Especially on the second-story.

Here's Joseph checking out the house with me trying to pick out a room. There were plenty of rooms to pick from.

 We got one that was big enough for a port a crib and a pullout bed for William and Gracie. I don't have any pictures of the rest of the night because the rest of the time was spent hugging the rest of the cousins and family that arrived making dinner and then spending far too much time getting Joseph to go to sleep in that place.