Birthday Party!

Garrett turned 3 years old today. We had some neighbor friends over to share Papa Murphy's pizza and a Wall-E cake that I got from Macey's. Garrett got some gift cards from his grandparents, so Ben and I had fun shopping. :) We got him some train set accessories to go with our collection of tracks, including a great deal at Funfinity for a battery-powered Thomas engine. That was sort of the crowning glory of course. On the educational side of things we got him a puzzle that is a challenge for even us, and some wooden stencils that spell simple words. I also procured a great deal on Ebay for the movie Wall-E, 3-disc special edition-woohoo! I think I was more excited about that than Garrett was. :) I also try to buy the boys a hardbound book for their birthdays and Christmas, so we got him an Usborne book as I am now a consultant for the company. There's my plug for Usborne. :) Visit my website at www.myubam.com/C3124. Thanks once again, Uncle Daniel, for taking pictures. Ben's brother, Daniel, has been taking pictures at most of our boys' birthday parties since Richard's first! All in all we had a great time playing with toys, old and new, with our friends Jonah, Nolan, Oliver and Scott. Thanks for a great birthday Garrett, I love you!

First Day of School!

Richard survived his first day. He had a big grin on his face and waved as the bus pulled away from our house this morning at 8:15. We are very lucky in that the bus stop for our neighborhood is right smack in front of our house! Then he came home just after 12:00, and I had made a really filling lunch and he was ready for it! He told me about some games they played and the couple of kids that he knows. He and his buddy Gavin get to ride the bus together, but they are in different classes. He does have a few kids from Primary that he knows in his kindergarten class. It's going to be great!

Graham Cracker Time!

Before...

After...
And some other fun photos:

New Bikes

Garrett has inherited a hand-me-down bike and helmet-Richard's! Richard has outgrown them so I was able to find him a Spiderman Bike for $30 and a brandnew helmet with knee/elbow pads for $7 from KSL.com! I was so excited for such a great deal!

Piano Prodigy?

I hope so. But as for now, Richard's favorite song is the Darth Vader theme. Listen carefully...

Thanksgiving Point

We were all able to go to $2 buck Tuesday at Thanksgiving Point's Farm Country and Dinosaur Museum. Ben carried Spencer around most of the time, which was nice for me, and we had a pretty good time. I hadn't intended on being outside at the Farm country (we were initially just going to go to the museum, but the line to get in went clear around the building) so I didn't bring hats or sunblock...bad mommy. Richard didn't want to ride on a pony, but Garrett had a good time.



Garrett tried to squeeze through the bars...he had to go back the other way. He has a huge head. :)

After Farm Country we hit the museum as the line had disappeared. In the museum Garrett was pretending he was a scary dinosaur while Spencer napped.


While waiting in line for the Farm Country...the boys were being amused by the baby and Daddy.

Spencer is cool

Spencer is my homey...

And he sleeps with deadly weapons, like water guns!

Visit to Grandma Daly's house

Then we made it over to Bremerton (about a 2 hour drive from Seattle). Here played with all the old toys my parents have saved, went shopping a bit and just relaxed as much as possible. Richard helped my Dad in the yard one morning, so here they are resting...
Garrett got to go for a ride in my grandparents' Jazzy.

Spencer also started sitting up a lot better while we were in Washington, but not as well as Garrett did when we were there 2 years ago...remember his abs? The other photo is of Richard (Richard is the one in orange).

I also took the boys to a new park in Bremerton...that was a nice quiet morning.

Visit to Grandma Thornton's house

So we made the journey to Seattle, stopping over in Nampa Idaho over night with Ben's mother. We made it there with not too much trouble, just juggling baby happiness with eating times, etc. On the way through Yakima, I noticed my temperature gauge was running pretty hot, and later I had the thermostat replaced...hopefully that was the problem. Anyway, so here are some pictures of us at Ben's parents' house. Ben's sister Becky and her 4 children were there too. We also made a visit with Mindy, Ben's oldest sister who recently had her first baby, Jackson. We all went to the Woodland Park zoo together and it was a lot of fun.

Spencer is learning the joy of food, so here he is sporting some pureed sweet potato. No, he's not a red head despite the orange eye brows.

This is Spencer with cousin Jacob. Cute, eh? (His Dad is from Canada!)