Little Brother

Kyle's youngest brother, Caleb came and stayed with us for about 10 days. He was awesome to have around. I don't know that the feeling was mutual as he would often get a body slam from Gunnar as a wake-up call and had to hear his name repeated 100+ times a day by the little guy.
While he was here we tired to take a few fun day trips. We spend an evening at Charlie's Safari, a day at Anderson Island, and a day at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle.
Anderson Island:

Gunnar fell in the dirt during the hike. He was one dirty little boy.

On the ferry ride:

Science Center:

We hope that Caleb decides to come visit us again sometime soon. We really enjoyed our time with him!!!

Twenty-Eight, Ain't so Bad

I celebrated my 28th year of life on August 24. I guess over this past year I have come to the conclusion that getting older isn't really that bad. In fact it's a blessing. Celebrating a birthday means I have been blessed with another year of life. I am healthy, have an awesome family, and have many other countless blessings that fill my life each day. Really, I can't complain, even if I am a year older.
On my birthday we didn't do much, except I didn't have to cook. Which is always awesome, but was especially awesome on my special day. Kyle is on the South Beach Diet which requires a lot of outside the box thinking for yummy meals and it is 3 smaller meals and two snacks throughout the day. The first two weeks he lost about 15lbs. It was rough, but I think we are going to stick with it. He would like to switch back over to calorie counting which we have had success with in the past as well. We just have a hard time getting back on track if we have one off day. Sorry, back to birthday talk.... he ordered us pizza on my birthday and he just watched us eat it and ate something much more healthy (poor guy).
Kyle's work gets free tickets to all sorts of things. I saw they had tickets to a dinner cruise on the 25th. I said I thought that was something we could do for my birthday. He agreed and got us signed up. A bit later (when it was to late to back out) they informed us it was up in Bellingham, 3 hours away. YUCK. Luckily they drove us and it didn't end up being that bad of a ride. Kaytee our sitter stayed home with the kids, so it was a nice evening just the two of us and 8 others on the van, and about 100 others on the boat. It was put on by Soldier's Angels. If  you are ever looking for an organization to help support the troops, this is an awesome one! The cruise was up in Bellingham Bay. We were a little disappointed in the food, it was more appetizer type dishes, but the scenery made up for the lack of what I would consider dinner cruise food.
For my birthday Kyle bought me a new camera. It is a the Nixon D5100 Digital SLR. I don't want to be a professional, or even try to look like a professional I just wanted a nice camera to take pictures of my family and our travels with. Part of the deal with the camera is that I find a class to take to learn more about photography and how to properly use it. We have had fun playing around with it. It is nice to be able to take quality pictures. He always gets me way nicer things than I expect, and this far exceeded what I wanted, but I love it!
So here are some pictures from the camera on our first outing with it our dinner cruise.
This isn't our boat...we managed to get a picture of everything but the boat we were on...

 I am really overexposed, but its a good picture of me, so I had to share it.

 The water was full of sailboats. They were beautiful.

 We came across this crew team practicing.

 It was a perfect evening.

 We met Joe Moser on our cruise. He is an airman, World War II veteran and Nazi concentration camp survivor. Click HERE to read more about him if you are interested. 

 The sunset was pretty beautiful but it got really chilly towards the end of the evening.

The Big 1

Ryker turned 1 on the 22nd. I really can't believe my baby is a year old. Seriously, where does the time go??? He is a sweet little guy, with a funny little personality, who gets into everything. He is weighing in at 21lbs. The doctor was a bit concerned with his weight as he only gained about a pound over the last three months. I have to take him in for a weight check in month. He also tested low on iron so I have to feed him food with lots of iron  (I also found some vitamins with iron in it, so I cheat and give him those too). As far as the weight it concerned I attribute that to his mobility and growing. He grew 4 cm. since his last weigh in he has mastered crawling, walking, and is pretty good at running. :)
My little guy likes to eat, sometimes, but he really prefers the boob any chance he can get by with it. My goal is to have him weaned by September 22 (a month after his first birthday). I am not really sure who this process is harder on, him or I. The doctor kinda hassled me about still breastfeeding, which really annoyed me. They recommend breastfeeding for the first year, and he had just turned one 3 days prior to the appointment. I can't cold turkey taking him off the boob, I would probably explode. He is usually only eating about 2 times per day, so hopefully this isn't to painful for the both of us....I never thought I would have a hard time weaning a child, I didn't think it would be an emotional time for me, I was completely wrong. I know I am ready to be done with it, but it does make me a bit sad at the same time, really I think I just wish he would wake up tomorrow and not be interested or attack me for it.
For his birthday we had a little celebration at our house. We invited some friends and family. Turned out most of our friends were on their last little summer vacations, so it was mostly family, but it ended up being perfect. We had a great little party!
The cupcakes (I plan on taking a cake decorating class soon, my skills are really lacking).

 The proud parents.

 My cute boys. I am officially the mom of a 2 year old and a 1 year old. Life is crazy at our house.

 "I think I like this cake mom."

Trying to pick the cake up.

 This is the life!

 Diggin' in.

 "Lord help me..I don't think I can eat another bite."

 Gunnar was way more excited about the gifts than Ryker. Gunnar enjoyed opening all the gifts for his brother.

 The ball pit. Gunnar is buried in there. I found some balls on sale while birthday shopping and filled their kiddie pool with them. They LOVED it and provided lots of entertainment for everyone.

Thanks to all who came. We are so blessed to have such an amazing family and group of friends!

Ah Poop.

Some days life is a little more lively around here than others. Most days, I would love for things to be a bit more relaxed. I dream of getting to sleep in, children sleeping all through the night, my husband doing exactly what I want, Gunnar not having any potty accidents....
Oh no, did I mention the POTTY?!?! Gunnar was doing awesome. Since we have been visiting my parents he is having SO MANY accidents! He has only pooped his pants a couple of times through the whole potty training process, but has pooped them TWICE this week and peed his pants countless times! I know they say as far as potty usage goes in little ones any change brings about a little regression, well, I hope that's all it is! He has had two accident free days in the week we have been here. At home we were about the opposite, having only a couple accidents the entire week, and those were usually at church, when we were out and about, or the car (someplace other than home).
Today Gunnar has gone through at least three pairs of pants. Just now as I was feeding Ryker he stands at the top of my parents stairs and yells at me "Hey mom, I pooped" as he points to his butt. I was hoping he was mistaken and just informing me he pooped or maybe he peed. He getting better about using the correct terms with action (poop and pee) but still often uses them interchangeably, so there was hope that he had misspoken. No such luck, he comes down the stairs and shows me he did indeed poop his pants!
I really don't want to scoop poop out of his undies (and he is a bit sick so it would really be a task) so I usually just toss the poopy undies away (thankfully we have enough $$$ to replace them and he doesn't do this to often, or I would have to clean them). I ask him if he was done and he says "no." So I put him up on the potty. I told him to stay there while I took his nasty underwear to the trash outside (I don't think my parents would appreciate it in a garbage can inside).  Apparently his listening skills are lacking today because when I got back to the bathroom he was no where to be found. Can you imagine my horror???? I quickly realize that Gunnar doesn't wipe his own butt well so he is now running around my parents house with poop on his butt!!!!! Ahhh!!! I search and find him in the most obvious place, the living room floor playing cars....on the carpet of course. I rush him back to clean him up, then have to deal with the carpet! He needed up with a bath, and well, my parents carpet pretty much got a bath too! Thanks Gunnar, just what I wanted to do with my afternoon.
Between the poop on the carpet, and our dog being in heat while we visit, I don't know that my parents will be so anxious for us to return.
Then again, how can they not want to see these cute kids?!?!
Gunnar got his first haircut done by a professional today. He loved every second of it. I have to admit that I did just as good of job last time, mine are free, but don't come with balloons!

 Ryker is a busy boy. Busy keeping up with Gunnar playing outside.

Gunnar and his cousin Zane had a blast mowing Poppa's lawn last night. They were out for a good hour playing together. It was pretty sweet.

Lake Quinault

Last week we headed to the Olympic Mountains to Lake Quinaualt. The Quinault Rain Forest is one of four rich temperate rain forest canopies that lie within the west side of Washington’s Olympic Mountains. The Quinault Rain Forest completely surrounds Lake Quinault and reaches to it shoreline. It was beautiful. 

We stayed at a campground on the south shore road, but not on lake. We choose a more remote campground and found ourselves at a campground with 30 sites and only about 5 campers. It was nice. We were able to be far enough from everyone where if our kids were crying, I didn't feel like we were disturbing anyone else.

We stayed two nights. On our full day their we did about a 5 miles hike through the rainforest. It was beautiful, but hot. I had checked the weather and thought it was suppose to be in the low 60s. So when I got everyone dressed I put long sleeves on us all, not thick, just a covering...but it was WAY to hot. We were all dying by the end of the hike, probably why it is recommended to dress in layers while hiking. When we had the covering of the rainforest over our heads our clothes were perfect, but anytime we saw the sun we were HOT. It was in the low 80s. Apparently, I need a new weatherman. 

It was nice to be out and about with just our family of four. We had fun cooking at the campfire, soup, hotdogs, ziploc bag omelets, hillbilly trash breakfast, and my favorite smores.

On Wednesday morning however Kyle went out to the car to get some food and discovered we had a visitor. Thankfully, it wasn't a deer, elk, cougar, or bear, but a much smaller visitor, a mouse! Eww...a mouse was in our car rummaging through our food. Kyle tore the car apart looking for the little fellow, but no luck. We still have to put the plastic pieces back as now all our electrically wiring is exposed. Really with all the food our kids drop in car a family of mice could survive for some time in there. I am hoping he escaped and isn't still in there. This was definately not a highlight of our camping trip.

We did get to try out a new tent. I told Kyle for our family of four I thought we needed something bigger than our ultralight backpacking tent for two. He went all our and bought the biggest tent he could find. We weren't really happy with it and will be returning it (thank you REI). It gave us PLENTY of room, but wasn't really made well and wouldn't stand a chance in any sort of a rain storm. But it got our through this camping trip nicely. 

Camping with young kids isn't the most relaxing thing. Anyone have some tips??? The whole sleeping thing is just complicated. No crib to trap little Ryker in and Gunnar thinks if he can see us he needs to be talking to us. The first night was really rough, luckily the second night everyone slept better. Kyle was hoping the boys would sleep in their own section of the tent...didn't happen, sorry Kyle. 

Kyle would love to do some more back country camping like we used to do when it was just the two of us. But, for now, I think we are just going to work on mastering the campground camping with the car to hold all the necessary supplies. I think if we do back country camping with the two young kids we might need a pack mule.  

Kyle and the boys in front of the tent's garage.

 Gunnar loved throwing rocks and sticks in the creek. He got many spankings trying to sneak down to the water without Kyle or I.

 Purifying some water.

 The boys inside the tent.

 Kyle and Gunnar on the hike. Gunnar was so nervous while Kyle was crossing the log.

 Me and Ryker.

 Ahh...a break. I love taking breaks during hikes.

 I had to carry Gunnar too, he got jealous of me carrying only Ryker.

 My family after the hike.

 Boys playing in the tent. Its so big, I had a blanket laid out just for their playing area.

 Gunnar mastered drinking out of the milk carton while we were camping...Kyle is so proud.

On our way back to Fort Lewis, we drove about 30 minutes out of the way to Raymond, WA. Kyle's uncle, aunt, and cousins live there. His Aunt Tina and cousin Levi were able to see us along with some of Aunt Tina's family, but everyone else was working. I have never meet this part of the family, so it was fun to see them even for a short, sunrise visit. I should get to meet the rest of them in September when Kyle's cousin Micheal gets married.