Happy Birthday!!

Yep he's four. My little man turned four today. Such a big birthday. Four means that you get to go to school. Four means that you get to chew gum. Four means that you have to go potty all by yourself. Four means a big boy bed. And know my littlest man has hit this big mark. We are so glad that we have had Jack for the past four years. He has brought so much laughter and creativity as well as a new brand of ornery-ness that we haven't had before. You are such a great guy. Happy birthday Jack-man!!

We just got back from our vacation on Wednesday. We spent a week in Washington at a family reunion and then a couple of days in Seattle with Uncle Justin. So as not to blog down down my blog with a ton of pictures. I'll split the vacation up. We left on the 17th. The kids were very excited to fly in a plane and the 3 older ones did remarkably well. Izzy had a tougher time of it, but what can you do when you're 15 months and people won't let you walk around anywhere. After we got to the airport we drove 2 1/2 hours to Yakima. The kids were so excited to be out of a moving vehicle that they stayed up way to late. And I ate way too many of Chris' amazing enchiladas. Thanks for those Chris!!

The next day we decided to go for a couple of hikes around some of the trails in the area. We found a trail that happened to empty out onto a pretty nice little beachy area of the river. We spent a great deal of time trying to teach the kids to skip rocks and the older boys trying to out do each other with their skips. I mostly took pictures of two very cute little girls

The little girl that is not Izzy is her cousin Anna. She is 5 days older then Izzy and it was so much fun have two 15 month olds running around. Although Isabelle did not handle the other babies very well, it was fun to see them interact.

The next day we decided to head into town to go to a family fun center. We rode the go-karts. Cole was a little upset that he was still a little too short to drive one of the go-karts by himself, but there were plenty of Uncles to take the kids along for the ride. We rode the go-karts twice. The first time Nate took Cole, Joel took Riian, and Autumn took Jack. Chris rode by himself and ended up winning. The second time Cole wanted to ride with Chris. Nate took Riian and Jack wanted to ride with "that guy", meaning Joel. Once again Chris won so Cole was quite proud. We then rode the bumper boats. Cole and Riian could both drive these, although Cole's wasn't working properly, and Riian couldn't quite get the hang of steering hers. So I don't think they had as much fun. Us adults had a blast squirting each other and soaking each other. Nate took Jack with him and they plus Cole and Riian all got stuck in the fountain and ended up getting really soaked

The next day was the official start of the reunion. We had dinner together with everyone. And then just spent time reacquainting ourselves. Grandma Nita had bought the two little girls matching outfits and we put them in them that day, but unfortunately we couldn't ever get them together to take their pictures until late at night. So I took a quick snapshot of them.


Well that's it for the first half of our trip. I'm sure there are already more picture then one brain should have to process. I'll write about the second half another day when I feel like editing 20,000 pictures again. I will also post all my pictures on shutterfly, for anyone who wants them, but once again, when I feel like editing 20,000 pictures.