Inauguration of the fire pit

We have been remodeling our backyard and one of the project was a fire pit that Wade made. He leveled the ground, hauled in 2 tons of flag stone and build the cement blocks. I will post before and after photos of the back yard once all of the flowers have come up and are blooming. We had all of the kids together for the week and this was the first night the kids were here and we thought it would be the perfect night to try out the fire pit and roast some marshmallows. Brennyn was so wiped from the trip that she was already in bed, but the other kids had a great time.

Alliya was the only one that liked eating the marshmallows the rest of the kids just liked the process of roasting the marshmallows

Here is Brnson "roasting" his marshmallow. He found it much more fun to light it on fire and watch it burn to a crisp. He tried blowing it out when it first caught on fire and then decided the let the rest burn in the pit.

The family around the fire pit

Alliya and Grandma roasting marshmallows

Bronson liked eating the graham crackers and chocolate...

Emory eating one bight of her smore...she then too decided that she didn't like the marshmallow and wanted to eat the chocolate...I can't blame her, that is my favorite part.

The kids went "exploring" in the back yard and found a retaining wall to climb on.

I love this picture.

Emory....so happy

The all really like making funny faces.

Dancing Queen

I normally have my ipod playing in the house and for certain songs Alliya will stop what ever she is doing, coming running into the room with the ipod and start dancing. It makes me laugh every time. The typical songs are Hot and Your Cold by Katy Perry or Hey there Delilah by Plain White T's. This was a new one...

Weekend away...

We decided to take a weekend get away last minute. Work has been stressful for both of us so we booked this last week and went to Cabo for the weekend. One of our favorite things to do when we have time to ourselves is to get away for a couple of days and force ourselves to relax. We stayed in San Jose, which is a small town about 20 minutes outside of Cabo. We rented a car for the weekend and spent it relaxing in the sun by the pool, reading books and going into Cabo when we felt like good people watching.

This is our hotel and the view from our room.

Wade relaxing by the pool reading his book...has to be non-fiction. I actually think this book was on management. He is the only person I know that will take a work book on a vacation...what a good manager. At least he is in the sun reading it.

The pool, nice and relaxing. We think they pumped filtered ocean water into the pool so it was the same aqua blue as the ocean.

A stop on the drive to Cabo from our hotel.

Our hotel beach...we are more of the type of people to sit by the pool and enjoy the ocean than we are the type to actually swim in the ocean, but it was beautiful to see and listen to.

Look what I found!

Walking around Cabo before our sunset cruise. It left at 5 and came back around 8:30 and we were able to enjoy the sun, eat good Mexican food and get some great pictures. This was my favorite part of the trip.

The famous arch...

The first snow of the year....in April

This winter has been so unusually warm, especially compared to last year when we had a couple of feet of snow for weeks. It hadn't snowed at all this winter at our house until April 7th. We didn't get much, but it was the first time seeing snow at our new house. I love the snow and hope to get more next year and I hope I don't have to wait until April for it again.

Here is a video of the chaos that is the Easter egg hunt in Snoqualmie. It doesn't last long and the kids run around trying not to push anyone down. Alliya keeps wanting to do this over and over again.

Easter Fun!

So I am finally posting pictures from Easter...things have been a little busy around here. Our community does a big Easter egg hunt for all of the kids and it lasts about 1 minute. The kids have a great time and it actually wasn't raining. We also had an indoor Easter egg hunt at the house and Alliya was so excited to get money to put in her new piggy bank that she got for Easter. She now has "chores" that she does and will ask "did I earn money?". Now she has a really cute piggy bank to store all of that money.

Ready to go to the Easter Egg Hunt with the "kiddos"

Her new favorite face - she loves making silly faces and looking at them on the camera. It is amazing that we grew up without being able to see the picture immediately after it was taken.

Fresh snow...it actually snow last week at our house.

Counting the eggs. Wade asked her how many she was going to get and she replied "3". He talked her into getting 10 and promised hot chocolate at home. She ended up getting 11....it was an accomplishment with all of the kids running around.

On the way home with all of her eggs and candy

Getting ready for Easter

We all did Easter projects this week....Wade dyed eggs with Bronson, Emory and Brennyn and then had an egg hunt with them and Alliya and I had our friends Tracie and her daughters Sophie and Taylor over to dye eggs. As you can see, some of the eggs were "damaged" in the process, but the kids had fun! I followed it up by making picture frames to put the kids cute photos in for Easter.

One of Alliya's best friends Sophie. They lived with us for about 2 months and they love it when we get together so they can play.

Alliya had blue/green fingers for a few days after this....

So much fun!

Those hands were green for a while...good thing her favorite movie is princess and the frog....she pretended she was a frog.

Emory wanted to make hers better by using crayons...she also made a watermelon egg.

After the egg hunt...

Plastic was easier for her...all she wanted to do is break the eggs, and ended up spilling two cups of egg dye.

All of the dyed eggs

A couple of the frames I made when my mom was over for the weekend. What a fun girls weekend.