Yogurt!!

Our daughter is quite a fan of yogurt. It is one of those dishes that can not be eaten by spoon alone, oh no, the whole bowl must be tipped up and every inch must be licked, and then the fingers, hands and arms must be used to scrape up every last particle and convey it to her mouth. We're not sure how she gets quite so much in her eyelashes, but we're hoping that by the time she leaves for college she will have found a new, less-messy way of eating her favorite food.

It's not pretty!

(it looks dirty but that's just the bruising)

These pictures were taken a week after spraining my ankle. You can see the swelling has gone down A LOT, but it's still black and blue and sore.

Lake Cushman

Russell standing on the dock at Lake Cushman.

Christian and Shannon
My parents.


Brielle mostly enjoyed digging in the dirt at the water's edge. She would have liked to have played with other children but she didn't have much luck. She tried to engage every other child there in conversation, but it never worked. She'd go up to an 8 year old kid, squat down in front of them, look up into their face and say "mungledeenolang?" "sitangollodogee?" and then usually the kid would look at her and go play somewhere else. Oh well, in a few more months she'll probably get the hang of small talk!
I'm sitting there on a log soaking my ankle in the water. The second night that we were at the cabin I was walking down the outside steps carrying a sleeping bag and two other bags (it was midnight by the way and very dark) I misjudged the steps and ended up falling and spraining my ankle. It was awhile before I could crawl back up the stairs and get help (my family in the cabin couldn't hear me crying outside).....poor me! Anyway, my ankle was sprained and swollen for the rest of the trip, so that made lots of things a bit tricky for us, but we managed to play around the impediment.
A large portion of our lake-time was spent trying to balance on the logs that partitioned off the swimming area from where the boats could go. Christian and Shannon were the most diligent at it!

Doing the Dishes

Doing the dishes with Grandma is MUCH more fun than doing the dishes at home! Especially when you're at a cabin...... and your grandma lets you sit in the sink. =0)

hiking pictures

After visiting all of our Seattle places, we went to Lake Cushman and stayed in Russell's Uncle Dave and Aunt Carol's cabin. It was great fun and everyone enjoyed swimming in the lake and hiking and canoing. These are some pictures from a hike we went on.

Christian jumping into the water.

Russell took three pictures and superimposed them to make this one above so you can see all of Christian's flip into the water.

Brielle laughing at her Grandpa.



This is a giant cedar tree that uprooted and tipped over. They're all standing close to the roots on the trunk of the sideways tree.

And about halfway through the hike Brielle crashed and slept in Russell's arms til the hike was done.

Whidby Island

On Whidby Island we went to Fort Casey, an old concrete fort guarding the harbor. It goes on forever with cannons and lookouts on the top and a labyrinth of dark concrete rooms beneath. It was a good thing we had a flashlight so we could see where all of the dark passages were going! It had precious few guardrails and was an extremely dangerous place to take a one year old, so naturally Brielle loved it.


And then we took the Ferry boat home.

Decption Point

On our way to Fort Casey on Whidby Island we stopped at Deception Point (or is it Pass?) to look at the view and throw rocks in the water.

Seriously Fun Fountain

As we were leaving the Science Center we came across this ENORMOUS fountain down in a huge concrete arena. Handfuls of children were running around squealing, trying to get close enough to the fountain to touch it without getting wet, and of course it wasn't long before the children in our party joined them. The fountain would go off randomly, sometimes shooting out one side, sometimes the other, sometimes the top, sometimes all of the spouts, but it was always going. The trick was to try and guess when you could approach it without getting soaked. Russell got the wettest, and Christian second most.
Here Brielle is trying to pull her Grandma up to the fountain.

Christian and Russell at the base of the fountain.....getting wet!


Here's Russell and Brielle at the base. Brielle finally got to touch the fountain!

And Grandpa running away from the water!

Pacific Science Center

The Pacific Science Center is right down town in Seattle, next to the Space Needle. We used to go there all the time as kids (my family and Russell's since we both lived in Washington when we were younger) It was fun to go back and re-live old memories. And Brielle loved it!

Sitting on the giant chair.

Playing with water, always a favorite.

This is in the butterfly house, Brielle is fervently studying the species identification guide before heading off to locate more butterflies!

Our little chess player.

Here's Grandpa on the balancing bike. It goes on a thin little rail way way up in the air. You can see that Grandpa looks a little worried!
Russell on the bike.

Me on the bike. (yup, even pregnant people can go!!!)
And Grandma was the least worried by the height!


They had a bubble blowing station on the roof that Brielle loved!

There were tons of other exhibits too, we just don't have pictures of everything.

Pike Place Market

Here we all are at Pike Place Market. One of the nice market vendors jumped in the picture to take Russell's place!
Brielle putting money in the big brass pig.

We thought these were some pretty cool guitars! I love the two-handled look.
If you ever go to Pike Place, search out this little Doughnut vendor, he has a mini conveyer belt, like Krispy Kreme's, on his cart and it makes the BEST doughnuts!! Brielle is cramming one in her mouth in the picture. He's kinda hard to find though, I got doughnuts from him on my 5th grade field trip and never found him since, until this visit!

Brielle with her Grandpa Francis

The market vendor tried to sell me one of these hanging pepper arrangements, they're supposed to enhance fertility. I said I'd pass. =0)


This was the very impressive balloon man, he made the best hats!