Portland Temple Peeps

I can't help it.

Just a few more.

 

NorCal Gypsies

The road to Seattle ended up being a little bit longer this year, thanks to a few fun pit stops along the way.  We started in Sacramento with our friends, the Broadbents, whose AMAZING home kept us so happily occupied that we completely forgot to take any pictures.  Wish we had.  Acres of peaceful, beautiful property surround their bright, spacious home decorated in that distinctly-wonderful (and magazine worthy in my opinion) Heidi style.  Their backyard leaves nothing to be desired, either.  I'm pretty sure our kids could have spent the full two weeks of our vacation playing in it. 

Next we headed over to Brownsville--near Grass Valley--to visit Stephen's uncle and his girlfriend.  Blair and Roseann live way up in the hills with only the deer and bears as neighbors.  Roseann and Stephen have been talking vegetables, fruit, and flowers for several years, so of course the first order of business had to be a tour of the garden, orchard, and yard.  Fantastic.  They grow, jar, pickle, jam, dry, dehydrate and cook with all sorts of produce and herbs.  Lucky us, we got to try some of that yumminess.

Gardeners unite!

The boys sad to leave the tree swing and Bugs the cat

After Brownsville we headed over to Redding.  Uncle Bill lives around the corner from Stephen's grandma's house, so we had a chance to visit with him.  We also got to see Stephen's cousin and her family.  The kids love swimming in their pool with Jack and Ava, and we love chatting and catching up with Katie and Josh.

Benito and Billy Idol with Jack

Millie in girl heaven, a.k.a. Ava's room

After our fun Northern California walk-about, we drove on to our first official stop: Portland with my little sis and her adorable family.  Normally, we pit stop at their house for a night and then move on to Seattle.  This year we had the luxury of staying longer and spending some quality time with some of our favorite people in the world!  We loved it too much, I'm afraid, because it made me wish we lived closer to each other more than ever. 

Frequent sight: Honeycomb scarf-down

Cosmic Lanes at the bowling alley?  Yes, please!!
Mills and E busting a move to the dance songs

Waiting my turn with Benito



This girl loved using the dinosaur slide for her bowling ball

Jenae and I
(or awesome bowler and terrible bowler:)

Cascade, aka biggest you've ever seen, raspberries we picked together

This little girl is a natural. 

Berries in the northwest.  What could be better?

Sunday afternoon seemed a good time to introduce our kiddos to one of our favorite temples

Flowers = fun

Cousins at the reflection pond

Clouds, glorious clouds

Two years to go

One thing definitely does look like the other...

My eyes are closed, her mouth is open.  Sisters!

 

Stephen was super impressed that Burgerville gave out seeds with their kid meals

Beat the heat at a water park

Benito and E having fun filling buckets

The boys scheming and/or retaliating

Stephen catching some shade with Chase and the twinners

 

Quality time with a cutie

Reading books is the best

 

Boogie Woogie Doo Wop

Millie had her first ever dance performance a month or two ago, and while it was extremely small and simple in comparison to the big recitals we've heard they put on every two years, it seemed pretty exciting for Millie to be up onstage.  A family first, let's put it that way.

* Special thanks to Liz for all these photos.

(I was busy recording video with our camera)

Miss Amanda getting the girls in place



I need some stage mom training.
No one sent me the memo on lots of make-up, lacquered hair spray, or
the art of putting on and taking off costumes with safety pins.

Comfy black pants pulled up way too high?  Check!

Ice cream sandwiches for everyone after the show.  Hooray!

Show over.  Back to life.

 

Guess who's never been to a dance recital before?
Such happy fans!
"Do you have any idea how many of your soccer games
Millie has attended over the years?  I don't care if you're bored!"