A lovely little visit

Logan's Grammum has lived in Anacortes, WA for many years. It's a couple hours north of us, or at least it is on a good day. We drove up yesterday for a little visit and due to holiday traffic it was over three hours before we arrived. But Katie napped for a bit and we had a trivia book and a new DVD for Rowan to help pass the time so it was okay. Once we were finally there we unloaded and hung out for a bit. After dinner we walked down to the little beach with Rowan, Katie, and Max. We left Henry the standard poodle to keep Grammum company since Katie had forgotten she'd ever seen him and was quite frightened of him.

I had left my regular camera back at home so I just made due with my cell phone camera. Here we are making our way the three blocks to the beach.

Made it!

Katie exploring safely behind a log with the ferry building in the background.

Getting a little braver, tossing sand...

...and braver still!
"Throwing" rocks with Rowan. (Katie doesn't really know how to throw yet, we're still working on the release part. But she still has fun!)

Dinner anyone?

Logan found this little guy and placed him on a piece of "beach glass" ;)

Not the best shot of myself but Katie looks cute and since I'm pregnant I'm trying to be more accepting of my image as I know it's a tad larger than normal! ;)

It was a beautiful evening!

Rowan showing off his "skateboard" he is rarely without an imaginary toy or weapon of some sort. Most often it's a skateboard or snowboard.







I asked Rowan what he was pointing at but he doesn't remember. (I think it was some birds.) He also asked me if I could "turn" the picture so we could just see what it was that he was looking at.

I laughed at first but maybe the kid is onto something. Maybe in the future cell phone cameras will take 360 degree pictures so that will be possible. Who knows?!

There aren't any pictures of the rest of the evening but we had a good time. The kids brushed their teeth and went off to bed. Grammum, Logan, and I watched CSI Miami then hit the sack. Somewhere around 3am Rowan joined Logan and I in bed but Katie slept soundly through the night. This morning we had delicious waffles, played around the house for a bit, then while Katie napped Logan provided Grammum with some slave labor while Rowan and I hit the beach again!

I let Ro wade into the water to throw rocks even father.

Katie had a good multi-hour nap and after a yummy lunch we packed up to hit the road. As we were heading out Katie was pointing and saying "dees" (please) towards Grammum's stair chair. Grammum sat down and I set Katie on her lap. At first Katie was nervous, I think she pictured Henry bounding wildly around the corner or something but he was outside on the deck. After a second she calmed down and enjoyed her ride down the stairs :)

Thanks Grammum for the wonderful time! We will see you soon I'm sure :)

Random Moments

It's been so long since I've made the time to sit and blog that to really fill you in would take too long! So here are a bunch of random snapshots from our last month. I hope I can get back to blogging fairly regularly once summer and all of its activities and busyness dies down. We'll see though, with this growing belly I don't know if I'll have the energy! ;) I guess we'll wait see, but for now: Random Moments!

To earn money uncles Hayden and Cameron cleaned our roof of moss,
they did a great job!

Rowan entertains a slightly confused Piper

Uncle Ty and Ro search
for a lost rugby ball

Rowan has a blast in the yard

Uncle Cam consoles Katie after she got splashed by Rowan

Goofy girl

No-more-training-wheels training

sweetness

Random Moments from the Godsiff Reunion!

pretty flower seen in downtown Hood River

No one looking
except the sheep and elk...

My children are random...

Picture of a picture

Random moments with
Uncle Ty and Aunty Caroline!

gophers?

Katie and the ball game

Another random moment from the Oregon Zoo

The view -->

Ah, Portland :)

Random snack time moments

Random moment with Uncle Kiel

The boys got very silly once they realized Kiel's glasses were mirrored

Random cousin moments at our house

Rowan pulls security while "Grammarazzi" snaps away

Random moment from yesterday

I got Katie stickers because she loves to stick them all over her arms, face, and shirt... I had no idea it was even more fun to stick them on Dad while he tried to rest! ;)

Halfway!

Tomorrow I will hit my "official" 20 week mark. Which means this pregnancy is halfway done! :) For the occasion I thought I'd spruce up the ol' blog and finally take a profile shot of the "bump".


20 weeks also means ultrasound, which for us means finding out the gender! :) I'm sure most everyone reading this already knows but just to be official,

it's a...

Yup, Rowan gets another sister! He wasn't 100% thrilled with that but I think he'll be alright. He's such an awesome brother and so good with babies I think that when she comes he'll be excited anyway. Katie of course is clueless and busy learning new words and figuring out ways to convince Logan to take her on bike rides as much as possible.


I don't know if our new little miss will be as enthusiastic about riding bikes, though there's a pretty good chance! From the pictures it seems there may be gymnastics in our future ;)

Not the best ultrasound picture ever but I just love the foot above the head!

I don't know how it'll be with 3 kiddos around here but I know we're all ready to welcome and love up this little chicky already! December will be a good month :)

Hello July!

We had quite the first weekend of July. Logan had a 4-day and even though we didn't do too many things it seems like we did a lot, and it was fun!

Canada Day
July 1st we granted Rowan a wish that he's had for a long time, we went to Charlie's Safari! C.S. is an indoor play park of sorts. They've got half a dozen giant inflatable slides and bounce houses.
It's one of Rowan's most favorite places.

Last time we came Katie was a little small to really run amok
but not this time!

Rowan will shoot anything into a "basketball shoot" even blocks.

One more reason C.S. has earned Rowan's affection is the arcade. Katie enjoyed playing a bit but it was Rowan who really got into it.

> > >

This one is for Uncle Evan
and the other beavers in the family!

We love Charlie's Safari!!

After a good nap the kiddos got out and enjoyed our bit of warm weather playing some wet games in our yard.

Katie Katie little bucket lady

Home run!!

Forth

of

July!

We journeyed south for the 4th this year. Portland was also blessed with the lovely summer sun that weekend!

Just about every drawing cousin Wyatt did that day was accompanied with a little Katie scribble.


Later we headed over to my sister's in-law's house
for some food and fireworks.
She was nice enough to take a family picture for us.

Coco's Mom-in-law had some patriotic goldfish crackers for the kids. The little ones especially loved them!

These two crack me up!

After dinner we decided that the kids probably wouldn't last till dark and for my their sake (and ours, Logan had to work at 6 the next morning and I had an early OB appointment) we decided to bend the "rules" and do our sparklers and fireworks a bit early.

The uncles gathered the kids in the neighboring field

And the fun commenced!

Danika would start squealing whenever her sparkler started sparking, it was pretty funny!







Katie LOVED the sparklers!!

Rowan was a little nervous at first
but he got the hang of it in no time.

finally . . .

Let the show begin!

The pictures don't really do a good job showing how nice they were. Even though it was still light they were pretty cool. The kids were applauding most of them.

It got a little smokey

Cam is a good uncle

Garrett and Katie sort of lost interest before the end . . . sheesh, toddlers . . .

As soon as it was over Garrett was outta there! Showin off his bear crawl :)

I was snapping pictures of Logan tossing Katie when I got this one and said, "It looks like she's jumped off the roof!" which Rowan of course wanted to see and of course wanted to do also.

So here he is "jumping off the roof"

It was a great evening and a great 4th. Of course I can't celebrate the 4th and our freedom without a thought for those great men and women who have fought for that freedom and paid the ultimate price. We are indebted to them for their sacrifice.



I thank God that He has not only given us freedom in Jesus Christ but freedom in this great country. God bless America!