Birthday full of March Madness

Guess how old Danny Boy turned yesterday?

The day consisted of a lot of this....(notice the 4 different games being watched at the same time)

This is what you get when you let the 3 year old hold the pizza in the car.....floor mat flavored pizza anyone?
The 5 year old had the perfect gift idea for his dad, A Slip and Slide! Why didn't I think of that?

The girls got birthday boy a nerf gun that is a 6 bullet loader with a laser pointer. Pretty cool stuff! Can you see the excitement? They can't wait to be birthday boy's target practice! yahoo!

Birthday boy loathes frosting so naked cake is his cake of choice.
We ended the fun filled day with a spanking machine (thanks to aunt Dixie). The kids line up, legs spread for the birthday boy to crawl through.

Birthday boy plows through the spanking machine destroying everything in his path. Three year old sees the danger, turns around and decides to make this a kicking machine.

Poor birthday boy!!!

We love you Birthday boy! May this year find you happy, healthy, wealthy and wise!

Spring Has Sprung!

We have had some beautiful days here in Vancouver. The bees are buzzing...and pouting?

The Beautiful Northwest

Our little family decided to go away together for a few nights while Daniel had 2 weeks paternity leave. We used vacation time when Lucas was born not knowing about the change in policy at work. We had to use it within the year so what better time than March? Our getaway ended up being such a wonderful time together. It almost makes me want to have another baby for the paid two weeks off!

We drove up North and stayed in Port Angeles and visited the Olympic National Park. Most of the park was still closed, but from what we did get to visit it was well worth the trip. Here are a few of the many pictures we took on our adventures.

This is a map of where we were last week. Our trip spanned from Port Townsend at the tip of the Puget Sound to the Olympic NP coastline.

Looking west across Lake Crescent

Moss encrusted trees hanging over a small river feeding into Lake Crescent

Some weird type of rainforest monkey

Looking towards the north shore of Lake Crescent

Dan dead lifting a tree

Wild animals peeing in the park

This was kind of cool because you can see two trees that sprang up from a fallen tree

Forrest fires can burn out the inside of a tree but the tree still lives

Again looking towards the north shore of Lake Crescent

Addie and Kenny on a log

A snapshot from the side of the highway leading out to Rialto Beach (just north of LaPush)

More Rialto Beach. You can't see it in this picture but this was the largest surf I have seen on the Oregon/Washington coast.

Near sunset at Rialto

The beach was littered with these old dead logs. You have to climb over about 20 yards of them before you actually get to the water.

I love this picture. It almost seems like a fake background.

Waterfall up the Elwha River Valley (north end of the park not far from Port Angeles)

This is the front side of the old army barracks at Fort Warden, WA (2 miles north of Port Townsend)

Coastline of Fort Warden and the boys on the roof of the barracks.

Fort Warden light house

Jack and his snot/sand mustache

Crossing the Tacoma Narrows bridge was so scary I could barely watch. I was driving so it made it even worse.

View from the Tacoma Narrows bridge

It Wasn't a Pilgrimage!

We recently completed a tour of the Washington Olympic Peninsula. We drove from Vancouver up to Port Angeles, across the Northwest tip of the state, and ended at Rialto Beach. Our main motivation for the trip was to see some of the Olympic National Park. Along the way we happened to pass through a few towns that have recently been made famous by a certain vampire based FICTION novel. Because I did not want the beauty of the national park mixed up with these rogue pictures I wanted to throw them up before Sidnee got to the main post. So for all you Twilight fans out there, yes there actually is a little town in NW Washington called Forks, no there are no actual vampires there, and yes everyone in that town is milking it for all it's worth. We even stopped at a hamburger joint for some dinner and they were hocking a Bella Burger T-shirt. Can you say LAME?Even the City Chamber of Commerce was getting in on the act with Bella's truck parked in front of the city offices building. I think the truck was suffering from a Valentine's Day hangover.
A wrong turn took us to LaPush and a warm welcome from Jacob's tribe.