Memorial Weekend at Deception Pass...

As is tradition we spent Memorial Weekend camping at Deception Pass (the top of Whidbey Island in Washington - about two hours from home). It was so beautiful!! When we got there the sun was shining and we were sure that was going to be the only sun we saw all weekend. Luckily we were wrong and it only rained a little bit on Friday night. Kenzie said a prayer before we left and asked that it would be sunny - we were so blessed! It was cold at night, but the rest of the time was perfect. We couldn't have asked for a better weekend. My cousin Kurt and his wife Bonnie came and camped with us. It was their first camping experience in Washington. I warned them they would not all be like this, and the massive blue tarp should be an indicator of how things typically are :)

The campsite:

The beach....Jaron figured out how to do a "sand angel", Kurt figured out if you took rocks and stacked them against a log then covered them with sand you could make a recliner, Bonnie flew a kite and napped on the beach, Paul hit rocks in to the water (like always), I took a nice nap and Jack and Kenzie built lots of castles.

At the end of the trip we took the time to stop and walk out on the bridge:

Jack is 8!!!

My firstborn has turned eight and I am not quite sure how that happend (hopefully he will survive to nine :) ). Jack's birthday was a busy day because we were heading out to camp for Memorial weekend. Jack wanted donuts for his birthday, so he got up early and we went to the store to pick them out. Then we took some to his school class to help him celebrate. Once we got home, he got his birthday donut to blow out.

He opened presents from everyone....

We will celebrate more in a month when he gets baptized.

Happy Birthday JACK!! We love you!

Preschool Graduation for Mackenzie!

Mackenzie has graduated preschool! We are so proud of her. She is SO ready for kindergarten!! Big thanks to all the teachers (Melanie, Carla, Paul, Melanie and DeAnn). The school was so much fun and she learned a lot.

The whole class (Morgan, Justin, Mason, Brooke, Mackenzie and Morgan)

CONGRATULATIONS! - on to kindergarten....

Happy Birthday to Jaron (W) - 3 years old!!!!

Thursday was Jaron's birthday - I can't believe my baby is already three! We had a King party for him tonight (Kenzie had a princess party, so Jaron needed a king party....makes sense right?). Jaron invited his friends to come over and help him celebrate. All of the boys got crowns, (although they were smaller than we anticipated) and all of the girls wore tiara's:

Jaron wanted a brown cake with blue frosting. I didn't have any "brown" cake mixes, so he chose the one with the sprinkles. I was able to make the blue frosting and look - candles!! He loved having everyone sing to him and even danced. He did a good job blowing out the candles (with a little help from his Mom).

Everyone loves presents!!! Thanks everyone for all the great stuff.

Cole and Gracie couldn't make it but brought this great doctor kit over early...so fun!

I found him here filling his shoes with dirt post party....

To explain the "W"....about a year ago Jaron started telling us that "W" was his favorite letter. He would say that things with words on them were "ABCDE's" instead of ABC's and always pick out the W. We were working with him on how to spell his name and he says it is spelled "JARONW" and only invited people to his party that had a W in their name - I wasn't invited by-the-way :) When he writes his name on something it is a giant W and then an O and an N. Pretty good for only being three :) So if you come to our house and see something marked with the initial W - don't be confused...that stands for Jaron!

Happy Birthday Sweet little Monkey!!!

New Addition to our family and the trip to the zoo....

This is Mosely - our new member of our family! He is a six month old Golden Retriever, Cocker Spaniel mix. He has a lot of energy and is going to be a big dog, and he loves to play fetch :)

Jack's second grade class went to the zoo this week no a field trip and I got to go with :) Here are some pictures of our adventures.

Easter and the Walk for Babies....

Easter was really great this year. We dyed eggs - kind of. Mom the control freak put the eggs in the color, the kids just told me what to do :) It was the only way to do it in a short time and keep everyone clean....

The Easter Bunny came and left us each a treat - and eggs all over the house.

All dressed up in our Easter clothes!

We got ready and went to church. Another mother-of-the-year moment - notice Jaron's feet. I didn't realize he didn't have any shoes on until we had taken five minutes of pictures. Awesome.

After church, we went down to continue the Easter Celebration at the Sampsons. Ian told the kids how/where the indoor egg hunt was going to happen. The Criddle's just got back from a cruise - so Addie's hair is all in braids

The hunt!

Last Saturday we participated in the March of Dimes Walk for Babies. My office raised over $10,000 this year, which was totally awesome. All of our kids were premature and have benefitted from research done by the March of Dimes. In typical Seattle Weather, it rained. But we had a good time anyway!