A New Band

Did you know that straws from sports bottles make wonderful music?

The Crothers Kids
This is the kids and their cousins giving us a wonderful concert. They found every sports bottle straw I had and gave us a show. It sounds just like those tubes you could get as a kid and you whip them around and they make cool sounds. I think you can still buy those actually.

Grandparents, Mariners & The Zoo...

What do they have in common? That was what our weekend was full of! We had such a great weekend. Angela's Mom and Step Dad, Kathi and Mark, came for the weekend. Friday night we went to the Mariners game. I think Tim was in heaven. It was Coast Guard appreciation night which was fun. This was his second game he has gotten to go to since we have been here but the first with the kids and I. Tim would go to every home game if he could. Simon started out sitting by Tim but then he decided he wanted to sit by Grandma Kathi so Paige and Simon switched seats and Paige was asking Tim all kinds of questions about the game. I don't know if Tim could have been happier. She was watching it and listening to every word he told her. You all know Tim is the biggest Mariners fan. Sometimes all their stats and info take up too much room in his memory and there isn't room for other stuff! :-) Just kidding honey! Anyhow, the next day Tim asked Paige, so how many runs does a Grand Slam score? And she sat there and thought about it and counted it out. Then she told me see Mom I really listened to him. Tim was proud of her. Of course Paige doesn't remember it but she went to a few games as a baby and I have pictures of her in her bouncy seat sitting in front of the TV watching the Mariners with Tim.

Then Saturday we got up early and took off for the Woodland Park Zoo. A zoo is always fun. We got there at a good time all the animals were all up and active. Grandpa Mark bought the kids a chance to feed the giraffes which was a huge treat. They also got to feed some parakeets. They had a butterfly exhibit also where you could walk through and they flew all around you. Nixon got to ride a carousel horse for the first time. He has ridden on one before but they made us sit on the bench with him. This one has some horses that didn't go up and down so he got to ride his first horse. He got giggling pretty good because every time we would come around to where Tim was Tim would pretend to run along with it and for some reason Nixon thought that was the funniest thing.

I hope your weekend was as good as ours. We got a nice visit in with my Mom and Mark. It always goes by too fast but we are thankful we got to see them. Here are some fun pictures.

The Big Move

Well we made it! Our Big Move! Here are some pictures showing our new house and a few things we have done since we have been here. Sorry it has taken me so long to update this. I still have a ton of unpacking to do. My two car garage is 3/4 full of boxes I need to still unpack. The unpacking process is going a lot slower than I planned but we had some unforeseen circumstances come up that slowed us up. But eventually I will get to it all right? Sure I will! I do have 2 of our bathrooms put together and some pictures hung up. Paige's room is done. The kitchen is done. And most of the family room is put together. So here are some pictures.

When we pulled up for the first time Tim's Brother and family put this nice surprise welcoming us home!


This is the back of our house and then the yard continues behind me with a trail type thing the kids can walk around and lots of blackberry bushes. We have 2 rabbits that live in there and we also have seen squirrels and lots of birds. The kids are loving the back yard with all the animals we keep seeing.


This is the entry way so behind me is the living room then to the right is the kitchen then down the stairs is the laundry room, door to the garage and the family room.


Here is our living room. It's really nice with High vaulted ceilings, will make a great space for a big Christmas tree this year.


You go through the living room and then there is a sunken dining room.


Then to the kitchen (a bit messy still trying to put things away).


Then the kitchen over looks a family room/playroom! Yay finally somewhere to stick all the toys.

We have 3 bedrooms and two baths upstairs but I didn't take pictures of those yet. Lets just say they are not put together yet and it's like an obstical course to walk around up there. My goal today is to get the boys room in some kind of order. Simon keeps asking me to hang up his room decorations.


The kids made good use of the moving boxes by decorating them as "sleds" as they called them and then spent the rest of the day riding them down the stairs.


We picked a bunch of blackberries from our yard.


Downtown Seattle has a bunch of these pig statues all over the city. Some are easy to see others are hard to spot and each one is painted different. The kids like trying to find all the hidden pigs. This was a clown one we found. Some of them are right on the street others are inside buildings and then we have found a couple up on the outside of buildings above the entrances. I need to look into just how many pigs there are.


The kids are having so much fun living by their cousins. This was after Vacation Bible School last week. They are all having such a great time together.

Alrighty that is a bit of an update on us and a peek at our house. I will try and keep this updated more often now that things are slowing down a bit! (Yeah right life never slows down does it?) I really will do better on updating it though. We are finally getting into a bit of a routine. I think I sent out an email to everyone updating our address and phone number if I missed you please email me and I will get it to you.