Orcas Island!

So we were home for about 3 days. Just enough time for me to do the laundry from the previous camping trip and we decided to go on another. This time we went the other way, north, and headed to the San Juan Islands. They are beautiful!! We stayed on Orcas Island which has the tallest mountain in the San Juan Islands. It is great because they have a fire tower at the top that you can climb up and get almost the entire 360 degree view. From the top you can see Mt Rainier, Mt Baker, all of the San Juan Islands, Anacortes, and Victoria and Vancouver in Canada. It was amazing. We forgot our camera so we had to use our phones which are a lot less impressive and not very clear but they are still fun to show. We camped in the Moran State Park on a penninsula on a lake on an island! It was soo beautiful. The boys had fun running around with no rain. We also made this trip a little shorter and only stayed 3 days, 2 nights.

 Campground at the Moran State Park. We are camped at Mountain Lake. It was beautiful!

 This was about 20 feet from our camping spot. We again camped in  the middle of the campground so that we were further away from the water. Brody tries to jump in no matter where we go. He LOVES water!

 The waterfall that we hiked to. It was a 75ft waterfall that was really fun to see and a super easy hike with the kids, even Brody did this one mostly on his own.

 Our camp fire! This is a big deal because Ryan does not like campfire. He Clayton really wanted to have one and roast hot dogs and marshmallows so we did. He loved it. Brody does not really like fire so he was easy he would not get near it, which I prefer. To make smores a little easier, we got chewy choc chip cookies and marshmallows and did that instead. I have to say that I liked it better. Way good!!

 Clayton laying at the end of a dock feeling the freezing cold water.

 This is the tower that you climb up to see the views. Clayton loved it, he called it the castle, because it was all stone.

 The view of Mt Baker from the top. There was a sea haze they said that made it a big foggy, but you could still see enough to make it well worth the trip.

Clayton and Brody sitting on a rock and the campground. I have about ten of these pictures with them sitting on different things. Clayton would walk Brody around and find a log or a rock to sit Brody on, then sit next to him and yell for me to take a picture. It was so cute that I did almost every time. Brody loved all of the attention that he got, and Clayton likes to feel like he is a good babysitter.

Love My Boys!!

So we have new pictures to show and lots of new stuff to blog about but first I wanted to write some fun stuff about the boys.  Brody loves music! We have dicided this because he always seems to be dancing or singing. His "singing" is yelling, and sometimes that is really all it is. But when there is music on, any music, he will yell as loud and as long as he can. It really sounds like he is saying "Ya, ya, ya, ya". Since he can't talk yet. But it is adorable. In the car with the radio on he is the loudest I think and will "sing" for an entire 20 min drive to Seattle. Another thing he does is dancing. We will be walking somewhere and all of the sudden he starts doing this bounce walk. It looks like a mix between squats and a hip hop move. I call it his hip hop walk, and it is always random. Sometimes I think he has music playing in his head.
Brody is also the biggest tease. If you say lets go brush your teeth he will follow you to the bathroom, watch you get the toothbrush all ready and then open his mouth, just as you are about to put it in, he will run away laughing. He thinks he is so funny. Another of his favorites is to act like he is going to give you kisses. He leans in and then turns his head and laughs. He has the cutest smile and laugh that you cannot even be upset because he is so proud of himself for teasing you. The only time it is difficult is when you are out and he is walking and decides to run the other way. We take the stroller almost everywhere with us because he is easy to loose when he starts that at a store or somewhere like that.
He also, of course, wants to be just like his big brother Clayton. He follows him everywhere in the apt and does just what he does. When Clayton gets put in timeout it is as hard on him because then he doesn't have anyone to play with and he usually gets more upset than Clay.
Clayton is very good at being a big brother. He is very helpful and mot of the time will let Brody play with him. He is very smart, and has his dads strategic mind. We have a game like Risk on our phones and he can play it by himself and win! Ryan is quite the proud dad when that happens. He has also become our little explorer, he lives to check things out and create things. His latest is "traps". He will use all of his ropes and tie them from shelf to shelf in his room so that no one can get into his room. Except Brody, he always leaves room to crawl under. After he has the rope zig zagged back and forth he puts his scariest toys in the rope to stop you. His snakes and dinosaurs are usually the ones he uses. Every time we go camping he wants to make traps and catch an animal, more to keep than to kill though. The last time he made a squirrel trap, that ended up being called the Restraunt. He had tables and a ton of pine cones in there, and even snuck some cheese in there, which attracted a few squirels and he was very excited they liked his "Restraunt". He is always trying to use new big words that he has heard, and they usually end up being hilarious. Unfortunately, I cannot think of any off the top of my head, but I am going to try to be better about writing things like that down. He has started reading, I think mostly thanks to grandma, and will randomly tell us something that he can only have known by reading. 
I love having boys, they really are the best.  I could not imagine life without these two, they really are amazing.  This has become quite long, I am procrastinating cleaning the house, so I will end it now... to be continued......

Hello All!

So we have done more camping and exploring since but I do not have those pictures yet. They are to come. We have been having a ton of fun with dad while we can.  He officially starts at Boeing on May 18th so we had a couple weeks to play. We are going to do some staycations this week and will have more fun stuff to blog soon. We are starting to get to know the area and are enjoying it here. We have spent more time away from our apt than we have at our apt but we are going to be more home bodies now. Brody and Clayton are getting more used to the apt but they get cabin fever quite quickly and we have to get out so they can get some of their energy out. We have found two new parks that we are going to try this week. We are hoping that they will be good ones. We found out that we don't live in the best neighborhood. It is not the worst and not bad but it is a little rougher, and we are the minority here by far. But people are nice and we have enjoyed getting out and walking around here. Hopefully, it will still be easier when we don't have dad with us. I am sure we will be fine but it is a little harder to want to go anywhere without him. Well enough jabber, hope you are all doing well. I will do better at blogging while we are here and let you all know what we are up to.

Bragging Rights! Deal of the Year!

So when we packed up to come down here decided less was more and all we did was pull a small 5x8 trailer and packed the back of the car.  So we needed a couch, tv stand, desk, and desk chair. We started at Good Will since it was down the street. It did not have much, we picked up a TV stand and toys. We looked up the next closest Goodwill and it was in Seattle so we headed over there.  It just so happened that it was an outlet goodwill which we did not understand until we went in and looked at the prices.

 Desk and Desk Chair $4.50.

Couch $2.00.

We also got Clayton a white board coloring book. All total came to $6.85. It was the best shopping experience ever. We were sooo excited. We spent more on the TV stand that we had bought earlier which was a total bummer. However, due to Goodwill we were able to furnish our apt for about $15.00.

I bought the white couch because even though it was a little dirty I could tell it was clean because well, it was white. Here is my progress, I cleaned it and you can actually tell a difference. The clean is on the left and the dirty one on the right.



Mora Campground and Rialto Beach!! After two and a half days in the rainforest we were done with the rain and we headed to the coast. We camped a mile in at a campground. We had to wake up early in the morning at six so that we could catch the low tide and hike in on hard sand. It was great. We packed up the kids and our packs and headed in with the stroller. It was a sight I am sure but it was only 3/4 mile to 1 mile depending on how far you went. I pulled the stroller from the front with a rope tied to my pack and Ryan pushed it. Clayton hiked in and did great of course. Here are the pictures of the beach and the campground.

 Clayton was a great brother and would take Brody with him to explore. This was a cool tree that was in our campsite and the kids had a lot of fun making it their "fort".

 Posing for the camera! I have the cutest boys!

 Clayton bending down to poke the sea anenamies (sp?)

 A star fish in one of the pools. There were a ton of them everywhere. The kids had a ton of fun poking and touching them all.

 This is us standing in "Hole in the Wall". The only way through it without getting wet is going through at low tide. It was amazing!

 Here is a wider shot. The rocks that we are standing on are surrounded by pools of water with the star fish, sea anenamies and all sort of cool stuff.

 The view from our campsite. That is Ryan and the boys sitting in the lower left. The drift wood there was crazy big and made a nice barrier between us and the ocean so we could let Brody and CLayton run and not have to worry about them.

 Ryan climbing out on some rocks at the second low tide of the day.

 Brody crashed while I was changing his diaper on a pad. He was soooo tired, he woke up at 6 with us.

 This was a beautiful rock and we loved the cool tree growing out right at the top. It was sooo beautiful there. We were the only ones that were camping and it was wonderful.

Clayton is of course in his element at all times and was jumping from log to log. He loved it! It was the perfect jungle gym for him.

We had one long day at the beach and were planning on staying for two days. However, Brody got sick and had a major diaper rash and we decided that he needed a bath and some home comfort. So we headed home early and hiked out that night. The tide was coming in and it made a much harder hike out but we made it and it was a good workout for us both!

So here is an update on life.... for those of you that don't know... Ryan got an intership with Boeing for the summer.  We are very proud of him and super excited about being able to see new places. We have had a ton of fun already. We have been here two weeks now and I am finally going to get some pictures up.  Grandma and Grandpa of course helped us move down here and all the pictures we took were on their camera so those will be forth coming. We were able to unpack the entire apt, get some furniture, and go to the Seattle Aquarium all in the two days that they were here. My parents are amazing and a wonderful help. We don't go more than a couple days without Clayton saying that he misses them and Brody if he could I am sure would say that he misses them everyday.  Anyways, we got here on Friday April 27th, and by Tuesday we were packing up to do a 6 day camping trip.  We started in the Olympic National Forest at the Hoh Rainforest.  It was amazing, and we do not have a camera that does it justice but the pictures are still beautiful. It rained for two days straight! But the kids survived it and here are the pics to prove it.

 These are the cool crazy trees that were covered in moss and they were everywhere!

 Our campsite was a little less rainforest only because we wanted it to be away from the Hoh river which is right behind those tall trees. It was quite a large river and it was gray from glacier sediment.

 Us on a hike in the rainforest. We pushed Brody in the stroller as much as we could.

 A giant slug!! There were a bunch of these green and black and they were big!!

 Clayton hitched a ride! He was an awesome hiker, we went at least three miles on the second day, and he hiked the whole time. This is only for picture sake that he sat on the stroller.

Hanging out in the tent. Brody did not want to wear his beanie so Ryan gave him his Buff. They are great things and it made him look like a little Russian Grandma  :)