Happy Birthday Brandon

So Brandon's Birthday was back in September but I thought I would post the highlights. He had quite the party. He loves Buzz and toy story lately so we did a Buzzlightyear theme.

No party is complete without a pinata at our house. Not quite sure how that came to be, but I am hoping on ammending that tradition soon.

One of the games we played was "shoot Zurg" I hung up pictures of Zurg and let all the kids shoot the pictures with silly string. Brandon loved that.

I was especially proud of the cake. I think maybe I have just been watching a bit too much cake boss or something, but for some reason I wanted to try making a cake with fondant. It was actually a lot easier than I thought it might be, and quite fun. Here is the finished product.

In the end though I realize I don't really need to go to that much effort for this 3 year old. Anything sugary is bound to be loved and devoured no matter what it looks like. :)

Happy Birthday Brandon! We love you!

Hello Again

okay, so maybe it has been a bit since I've blogged. We kind of took the summer off, well summer and maybe most of fall as well. Having Three little kids will do that to you I guess. Anyways, my apologies to the throngs of avid readers we have following this amazing memoir of our lives. (or maybe just to the 3 or 4 people who may have happened to notice) In any case I will do a quick catch up of our summer/fall.

We Begin with the 4th of July.....

There is a community parade every year, and both the boys rode their bikes this year. Dad did a good job of decorating.

We were also lucky enough to have visitors in town for the 4th so we of course took them to the good old traditional seattle fireworks show at gasworks park. We arrived there right at noon. (of course we didn't want to miss the fireworks show which would begin at 10:30pm) A little over 10 hours hanging out at a park should be good right?

Here's everyone camped out on the hill

We played around and had some fun for a bit.

Carter couldn't get enough of following Daxton everywhere he went.


Lovely view of Seattle. Fittingly overcast. I assured our family that came all the way from Las Vegas, that is was NOT going to rain though.


Here's us leaving as it started to pour, (of course) around 4:00pm.
oh well. We tried.

Cousins

We were lucky enough to have the whole Hastings family come in July, (except for Danielle who we missed!)
Unfortunately I didn't really get any good pictures of us together. I did get some cute ones with all the cousins though.

We went on a few hikes. It was a beatiful time of year to be outdoors.
The boys gotta have their sticks!

This is such a cute one of Avi.

Brandon was so worn out, he crashed on the way back down. Uncle Alyn was nice enough to carry him down!

Seaworld

We got to have quite the adventure trip to California this year with my family. We had a great time seeing everyone and also went to seaworld, disneyland, AND legoland! I guess we just decided to do it all while we were there. We had a lot of fun. Here are some of the highlights......

We got great seats to the dolphin show at seaworld. We were warned that we could get sprayed, but it was a hot day so were weren't that worried. Besides, how bad could it be? Its just a little dolphin right? Those smiles didn't last long.....

Here's Ryan with Austin underneath the little blanket getting ready just in case we get sprayed. And oh boy did we ever.. The Blanket was definitely NOT thick enough! The dolphins soaked us before we even knew what was coming. The boys were really taken by surprise and cried pretty hard. We all dried out in the end though. I guess thats what you get for getting front row seats! Too bad I didn't get a picture of the aftermath. The show was pretty cool though.

There are the dolphins. They are amazing.

Lego land

We have some cousins that are really into legos so we went to Legoland. It was a blast. The rides were all just right for preschool age. And the lines weren't long at all. We would definitely go again.

It was cool to see all the stuff made out of legos

Brandon driving his lego car

They got to play miniature golf there and LOVED it. They still talk about it.

Disneyland

Carter loved this talking garbage can at disney land. There was actually a man standing by it doing the voice, but all the kids loved it.

Carter and Ryan in front of the Space Mountain ride. Carter actually went on Space Mountain! I didn't realize how scary this ride was and agreed to let him go. (He loves space/astronauts, etc.) He actually did really good! He said he was only screaming through the first part. I think I may have actually screamed more, just thinking about my 4 year old being on the ride!

(see space mountain reference in Things Carter and Brandon said today section to the right)

Carter on the teacups

All of us after the fireworks show. Thanks Grandma and Grandpa King, and Aunt Katie for coming with us!

Playing in the backyard

At the Lake

We got to go the lake quite a bit. Carter and Brandon loved these ducks at lake Samammish. They were pretty cute.

Austin Discovered he likes peanut butter and Jelly

Carter is my little lizard. He could just lay out in the sun forever.

And we did quite a bit of just chillin'

Spokane

We got to go to Spokane and spend some time with Cousins! Austin loves his Cousins, and they loved holding him. Here his is with cousin Mary

And here he is with Cienna

Brandon and Annie looking for "rolly pollies"

my park

We got to go to a park by where my grandpa used to live that I used to play at all the time as a kid. It was soo fun seeing it again and having my kids play there. It brought back so many memories!

This is the 2in deep pool I used to wade in as a baby!

These are the tunnels I used to crawl through
Cousins Avery and Bre. :)

This is the merrygoround I used to spend hours spinning on!

And this is the tire swing I loved to spin with my sisters on.
So fun. Sorry this post is probably really boring to everyone except for me!