Happy 3rd Birthday Braden!!

It's hard to believe that my baby is three today. Time has flown. Three years ago at 8:15am....

This is his first birthday with some friends - I have a cute picture of him in his Tux for the family party but in my disorganization, I can't find it to save my life! Dad... I know you took them, so if you have one could you send it my way?







ETA - thanks dad. Here Braden is on his first birthday at Grandma and Grandpa W's house.

Here he is for his 2nd birthday... he doesn't look very excited but atleast he's not crying in it. :) All the others I found he was throwing fits.

Here he is this year! Today as a matter of fact. We had a great party and he got S.P.O.I.L.E.D.!!! He ended up with a brand new bike, a power wheels silverado truck and many transformers and cars. He was a little protective over his toys this year, he wanted what he wanted and he didn't want to share if he could get away with it!


Here he is trying out his new silverado!
Check out the bike! TWO big gifts for one birthday - spoiled much?! Guess we shouldn't tell him that one was bought over a year ago and the other was bought used from a friend. :)

"I TRANSFORMER....." Overall, I think the party was a success. We got to do several crafts and the kids each had something to take home. Well, those that we could get out of Braden's room with the toys to sit and make something.

Lastly, because I promised to embarrass Paula with this video, here is Braden driving his new jeep and Paula letting him chase her. It was pretty funny.

A quiet week

I know it's been awhile since I've posted, but thankfully, there is nothing very exciting to post about. Braden is successfully potty trained for the most part... he can even AIM now, LOL. Scott even taught him how to clean up his mess if he misses at all. It's cute. Hmm.... interesting what we find cute after we have kids. The only downside to him being mostly potty trained is that he now wakes me up at 2-3 in the morning to go potty. He is still having difficulty being willing to go on his own, he wants someone there to watch him.

Kelsey had oral surgery last week to snip her lower front frenum. Poor girl... seems to be getting all the mouth problems in the family. :( She has already had teeth pulled in preparation for having Braces and she will probably have a tissue graft in the front when she is older. Her lower front frenum was too tight and has been pulling the gum tissue down, exposing the roots of the teeth. Luckily, it was a quick and easy surgery and my good friend and neighbor was there to assist on the surgery and keep Kelsey comfortable.

Kelsey is also proud to tell everyone that she got THREE awards at school last week. One for passing the WASL, one from her teacher for academic achievement and one from the school nurse for missing zero days of school so far. She also got the highest score in the class on two math tests in a row, earning her a free trip to the movies with her teacher, some other students in the class and of course their families. We got to see the movie Bolt, which was a cute movie and everyone enjoyed it.

I think that's all the excitement I have from our world. Life is more relaxed now that the holidays are over, the credit card bills are paid and our insane weather has finally started to calm. No more snow or floods from rain. However, now we have some strange fog cover which is causing stagnant air. I believe by this weekend we'll be back to our regularly scheduled clouds and rain.

Until next time....

Wii Fun

I know I promised to do this yesterday but I failed to sit down and actually load the video. Scott convinced me to take our Wii to visit my grandparents and I am really glad I did. We had a lot of fun showing grandma and grandpa how to do it, not to mention showing Great Grandma how to do it. Granted she'd forget how to do it each time and someone had to coach her through it, it was still a lot of fun. So, here are some pictures and the video to share. I'll apologize ahead of time for the lack of quality. I did it on my point and shoot camera. But you get the point. :)


Below are shots of Grandpa and Grandma playing. I have to add a funny comment about grandpa and his golf. He enjoys a game of golf now and then (less now that they don't live on an island WITH a course) so it was hillarious to see his real life golf habits come into play during the virtual golf on Wii. For example, before you actually hit the ball with your Wii club, you take a couple practice swings. In a true game of golf, this would mean stepping back from the ball so you don't actually hit it and then stepping forward when you are ready to hit. Grandpa stood and did his practice swing and then actually stepped forward to hit his ball. It was the funniest thing I've seen in a long time! And because I thought this was cute of Great Grandma. :) She had just got a strike and was cheering.

First Adventure of the New Year

Well, 2008 had barely ended and 2009 started with a bang. We left January 1st to take my mom back home and visit her side of the family. We also celebrated Christmas with them while we were there (that will be a separate blog post later today). Our usual 4 hour trip took a total of 26 hours to complete. Foolishly, before we left on thursday, I neglected to check the pass conditions. The pass we cross is very rarely closed and while I expected snow, I also expected an OPEN pass. An hour and a half into the trip (maybe more, the first movie had just ended) and we are now 20 minutes or so away from the pass.... see a sign that says, PASS CLOSED. I won't tell you the first words that crossed my mind... but know that if I said them out loud (I may have) Braden would've first said, "Don't say that Mommy," and then proceed to copy me. Needless to say, we pulled over and started calling for pass info. ALL passes were closed with no estimate for re-open. *gulp* More curse words crossing my mind. So, we decide to head back home and try again either later that night or in the morning.

Keep in mind from where we were, it was about an hour and a half or more home and then another hour and a half to the next pass... so another 3 hours of driving just to get us OVER the mountains.... we'd still have 2-3 hours to drive after that.

Scott came up with a new solution... his parents river property is about 45 minutes away from the pass we were closest too (White Pass) and was stocked with food, water and heat. So... we drove there. My mom had never been so she was excited to see it. We had a lot of fun at our impromptu camp out! We introduced my mom to "Duck Farts" which is the signature shot of Scott's work place. :) We played some scrabble, watched some TV (yeah... we were really roughing it with heat, alcohol, food and satellite TV.) and all crashed by 9:30. At 6:45am I called again for pass conditions and White was STILL closed with a "later in the day assessment." Over night there was a little snow fall and I got a few pictures.




The river property is gorgeous with snow on it. Not so much before it snowed... dirty, brown, pine needles, the grass was flattened from the last snow fall and everything was dirty looking, BLECH. By 9am friday morning we were in the car and on our way to Snoqualmie, which took us two hours to get to. Our Friday drive was a total of 6 hours. Luckily, the kids behaved VERY well in the car and I don't think I actually heard a single "are we there yet?!" from the back seat.

I edited this post because I forgot to post what the car looked like after our arrival. I don't think I've EVER seen my car this dirty!!!!