December

Ok, I know I am way to late to blog about christmas/December, I am a horrible blogger, but what can I say? I'm just going to blame it on the the kids. We had at blast a grandma and Grandpa Hastings, here are just a few of the highlights.

Making Gingerbread houses (still in Seattle) Not sure why Carter is wearing a neclace.

Acting out the Nativity. Always a Christmas favorite!

Sledding with Cousins! Brandon didn't really Love this ("Snow is not my favorite season" he says)
But Carter got to be quite the daredevil going down the slopes, would laugh when he wiped out and had an all -around great time

4-wheeling with Daddy. Fun, fun times in Wyoming.

plane ride

Ryan's Dad was nice enough to take us on a little ride in his plane. None of us had ever been in a small plane before and it was so fun. It was a beautiful sunny day and the valley was absolutely georgeous from the view up above. I must have snapped 100 pictures, but I'll just share a few.


Carter and Brandon both fell asleep right after take off. I think the noise and lull of the plane just put them right out. It was kind of nice, that way I could just sit back and enjoy the view.

Breathtaking

Here is Ryan when his dad let him "take the wheel" for a minute. I was pretty nervous at this point!

Halloween

Carter and Brandon had a great time being Mario and Luigi this year. They love playing the Wii, and Brandon always wants to be Luigi. It was quite the popular costume this year!

This is Carter's pose when I told him to make a face ike Mario

My cute little pumpkin! The hat was a bit too small.

He always want to be standing up nowdays.

Our cute little pumpkin of 2006. (Carter) He was just a few months older than Austin is now. Doesn't seem that long ago. How time flies! They remind me so much of each other.

We packed in the fun on Haloween. Pumpkin carving..(Carter was a bit scared the knife was so close to him)

Doughnut eating contest..

Trick or treating with friends

The finished product pumpkins.

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.