This is Halloween!

They both chose their own costume.

This is what Matthew does when you ask him to smile.

She refused to stand in the parts of our yard that had good lighting. This is also the only picture with an actual smile. She's a huge brat about picture taking.

Wouldn't you think my collections complete?

Happy birthday Grankey! My mom turned 52 today, she is now old. I hope I'm as cool as she is when I'm 52.

Hailey has been carrying the tinker bell tea set Grandma Y bought her all over the house. She even has it by her bed when she sleeps. She also carries around her, "collections" (pretty sure it's a Little Mermaid reference), which is a wipes box that is filled with all of the play food my Aunt Jackie bought for her. Whenever she has a spare moment she sets up the tea set with the food and offers Matthew and I, "samples." Mostly what she feeds us is, "Christmas Jenga."

Matthew has learned his animal sounds and proudly tells them to everyone. It's pretty cute except for when the bread is being passed in sacrament and he is reading his Jesus book and sees the sheep and proudly starts shouting, "BAA! BAA! BAA! BAA!" as loud as possible.

Whenever we are in the car one of the kids will shout, "YAY!" and the other one will repeat it. This is follow by a rousing chorus of yays, all the way to wherever we are going. It makes it all worth it.

My first beehive adviser passed away this weekend. She is a lady I love and admire so much. I hope someday I can be as amazing of a woman as she was.

About two months ago Matthew and Hailey started actually playing together. I love it. They have always loved each other, but this has made them best friends. It has also made them partners in crime, so I guess it's a double edged sword.

My best friend (after Alex, of course) moved to China for a year. I miss her.

Since vacation, we've been busy busy busy. Almost every weekend has been a party, but I've been too tired to blog it. I have some great pictures though.

I have discovered snow ice, but the closest place to get it is 30 mins away. If you live in an area with a high Asian population, go find a place to get some. I promise you, it will be worth it. It's one of the best things I have ever tasted.

Alex is still as hot as ever. :)

I'm happy, I'm tired, but mostly just happy.

Home!

So, I kind of have dropped the ball on blogging. I never even finished our vacation! Life has just been busy. So without further ado, here are some pictures of our tiny family being awesome.

Next we were off to the Pacific Science Center.

It was probably the highlight for the kids.

Matthew loved the butterfly house, Hailey was scared of it.

I love my hot husband!

The kids loved all the hands on stuff.

We also went to the Sci-fi/Music experience, but it was too boring to merit pictures.

MORE MONKEY!

I got to go inside a B-17! My grandpa was a WW II tail gunner, this was one of the highlights for me.

We're in a black bird, even though you can't tell.

By the way, this was the Air and Space Museum.

Air Force One!

This is what Seattle looks like underneath. It's a whole city literally built on garbage.

Space Needle!

KRISTI(ne) Falls

How many waterfalls are we up to?

Snow! This was supposed to be our beautiful nature walk to the reflection lake at Mt Rainer. The lake was frozen.

And this is what Mt Saint Helen's looked like. Thank you fog.

After that we headed home. My parents took the kids from San Fransisco and went home. Alex and I picked up the car his brother let us borrow from my Uncles in SF and then headed back to Utah, and from there a very slow tedious trip home in my stupid dumb car. We made it home safe, but TIRED! I think it took us longer to recover than it took the kids. :) My car is now fixed again, and we have been having lots of fun which I will hopefully blog about soon.

Hello Seattle

I meant to blog more last week, but two close family friends got married and our week was devoted to helping out with their weddings. The next part of our trip was the stomach flu part. Matthew got the stomach flu and decided to pass it around. It was LOADS of fun. Luckily it was a mild one, and we were still able to do all we had planned. These pictures go to Seattle but not through Seattle. This does go half way through our vacation. If you're sick of our vacation, you might want to skip this one. Especially since there is at least one more vacation post in the future.

From this lighthouse, you can't see the beach. It's just beyond those threes. Lighthouses are another necessity in our family vacations.

We drove through Aberdeen. Which happens to be the birth place of Kurt Cobain. Not really my thing, but I was still excited because my cousin Sarah LOVES him.

This is the Star Wars shop in Aberdeen, probably the high light of the trip for Alex.

We went to a temperate rainforest in Olympic National Park. It was gorgeous. It was amazing to see plants growing out of other plants because they don't need the soil. The average annual rainfall is 12 feet! It was raining while we were there. :)

For all of my crazy friends who love twilight.

After a two vomit incidents, Matthew had to wear Hailey's extra shirt for a while. He looks so pretty in pink.

In Seattle we stared at the aquarium.

Hailey was much more squeamish about the touch tank than Matthew.

I love these kids!

I think it's funny that Matthew has the darkest brown eyes I've ever seen.

And Hailey has the lightest blue eyes.

This is the view from the Harbor Cruise we took.

Creepy Mermaid that was in this shop:

It's like Ripley's and a gift shop mashed together.

We may have wore them out our first day in Seattle.

They completely slept through Pike Place Market.

This is the bridge we took to Whidbey Island. It's a gorgeous place. My dad has a mission comp that lives there AND an old family friend lives there.

Walking over that bridge with the kids is the scariest thing ever. Although no cars are coming, that is a lane on the other side of the barrier. the bridge is hundreds of feet up.

The island is full of amazing signs.

And another lighthouse, to fill our quota.

I still can't figure out what this is supposed to mean.

This is the ferry we took back to Seattle. Hailey thought it was pretty cool to drive onto a boat. AND that takes us to the half way point. Sorry my friends.

It's All For Grandma Y

So this may be a little picture overload of our vacation. If you don't like it tough. It's for Grandma's Benefit. ;)
When it was time to meet up with my parents, we were still car-less. We need a new engine, again. :( My awesome brother-in-law and sister-in-law, loaned us their car so we would make it on time to meet up with my family in San Francisco for the rest of our vacation. The drive from SLC to SF is WAY worse than the drive from SLC to LA. Nevada is the stupidest state in the whole nation.
From there we started family vacation with my family. My family's vacations are not for the faint of heart. My parents usually pack as much as 4 days worth of stuff into 1 day. So this will take me several post and you will probably be sick of all of the pictures. But don't worry, I'll won't talk too much, I'll let the pictures do that for me. Today We'll go from SF to Portland.

Hailey loved hanging out with my Uncle in SF. He let her go up on the ladder with him and pick plums!

The drive through tree that our car was too big to drive through.

I LOVE redwoods!

This shows you just how big some of the trees we saw were. This one wasn't even THAT big.

See Hailey's hat? It made lots of appearances on this trip. Isn't it lovely, or something? Thanks Grankey!

Us inside a tree.

These Elk walked right through a campground we drove through, it was pretty cool.

This is the beach that the opening of Jurassic Park 2 was filmed on. It's not that impressive of a beach BUT...

The fern canyon less than a mile away is one of the most gorgeous places you'll ever see.

So they used the beach and then headed to the canyon for more filming.

Christmas Card? Greetings from Team J...

Hailey was most impressed by the fact that he waves.

No J vacations are ever complete without at least 4 waterfalls.

This one may have had more.

Waterfall two

Waterfall three, and those were all in the same day.

The best books store on earth. I would move to Portland just for this book store.

Maybe for these doughnuts too. They were as amazing as everyone says.

This picture is dedicated to Alex's cousin, Allison.

This is a mansion overlooking Portland. The grounds and view were gorgeous.

The required family pyramid. Luckily P girls are light.

I think that makes four.

Oh! And five. And that doesn't even cover half of our vacation. ;)