Movie Night: How to Train a Dragon

Yesterday we all watched one of our favorite kids movies "How to Train a Dragon". Lee made himself a shield and sword out of cardboard and paper just like the swords and shields the vikings in the movie had. He also painted a picture of "Toothless" one of the main characters.

He's holding his shield and sword while snuggling with Dad and watching the movie :)
I just found some drawing tutorials I am going to print for him. I will have to post a picture of what he comes up with from using the tutorials.

New Years Eve

We had the kids for New Years Eve. I searched all over Pinterest looking for ideas on what to do to make it special for the kids. It was actually really hard to find anything cute to do.

I wanted to do this but ended up not having time to get balloons because it took me so much longer than I thought to make paper fortune cookies haha maybe we will do it next time we have them for New Years Eve. The idea is that you have the kids stand under it and then have all the balloons fall down and they pop them or play with them or whatever. I also wanted to wrap up a gift multiple times so they could peel off paper every hour and do a time capsule but I ran out of time...maybe we can still do the time capsule!

I made some fortunes for the kids and some for the adults.

Lee got these ones

Rylan got these

We got the count down on the tv just in time and then both kids ran outside and banged on pots and pans! 

And we watched :)

Lee's baby sister...

The day after we got back from the beach and when  Rylan came back from Ellensburg on Dec 29th we got a call that Lee's mom was having her baby. So Lee went to meet her. I didn't know what to do to make it special...and make sure he knew that we cared about it. So I just suggested he dress up in handsome clothes, make her a picture and a bracelet. He made a bracelet that says, "sister".  It looks kind of like this one that Rylan made for me.

This picture was posted on facebook...

He came back home and accidentally told us her name was "Olivia I mean Olivian" It was pretty cute! Her actual name is Vivian.

He didn't really tell us much more about her when he got back because he was so excited to play with Rylan. But today since he is home from school. He is talking to me a little more about her. He said that her eyes opened for a little bit and he thinks they are either bright blue or bright green or maybe even Robins Egg Blue (he knows that is one of my favorite crayon colors) 

He said that she moved her hands around a lot too. 

Long Beach Trip and Christmas

Well Christmas and Winter Break from school was weird this year...It was Rylan's father's turn to have him for Christmas and asked if he could have him through the weekend because his mom took time off and they were going to stay at her place in Ellensburg. We celebrated a little with Rylan and my parents on the 22nd.  Lee's Mom got Lee the 19th until the 25th so the boys didn't get to be with each other much. I had Rylan home with me alone until the 24th when his father came and picked him up in the morning. So we had no kids the night of Christmas Eve. Michael won some movie tickets from work so we went to a movie theater and saw Mockingjay (it was really good) which was fun - but I don't think we will ever get used to not having our whole family all together during the holidays.

Christmas Day we got to spend time with Grandpa Shad and Grandma Sandy and they brought Lee back home. That was probably the Christmassy-ist time of all the celebrations we had. We don't see them enough so that was really fun! Right after they left I was mad at myself for forgetting to take a picture :-( I almost invited over Nana & Grandpop (my parents) as well but our house is so small I didn't know how we would all fit. It will be really nice if we end up moving into a bigger place in the next year or so. I am really looking forward to being able to have family and friends over more.

Here are pictures of Rylan on Christmas over in Ellensburg. He wore his Santa hat over there and apparently didn't take it off once even to sleep!

The day after we headed over to my Aunt Nicki and Uncle Larry's house in Long Beach, WA
It was super sad that Rylan wasn't with us but it was good for Nana & Grandpop to spend some one on one time with Lee.  The beach was so pretty even in the cold. Lee loved it! And we stayed at a great hotel (Adrift is the name). We had two rooms both with double beds and Lee chose to sleep in the room with Nana & Grandpop which was really cute. They took him in the mornings down to the lobby to get us some of the free coffee and himself some hot cocoa. It was adorable.
We got lot's of pictures at the beach! Lee was in such a great mood the whole time we were there. He is really good at taking long road trips. On our second trip to the beach we found a big piece of styrofoam and turned it into a boat. We spent hours launching it from different areas to see if it could make it over the big waves. Lee got his feet and pants soaked but didn't complain or want to stop, (which is amazing because sometimes he will refuse to keep walking to school if he feels like some of his sock is poking him in his foot).

 For some reason there was a ton of foam on this part of the beach. It was windy so Lee had fun kicking it and watch it go up in the air and also trying to get it on Grandpop! :)

 The clouds were really beautiful and Lee pointed out how the ocean looked like crystals the way the sun was shining on it.

 My parents Nana (Nancy) and Grandpop (Greg)

 This is the styrofoam boat. Lee named it porcupine or pokey for short ;) 

 Adorableness

 Cheering on Pokey the boat! 

 Me and Lee talking about what colors we would use to ttry painting the beach at home with his new art desk. 

  More cheering on Pokey! 

 Building a 2 foot skeleton! (one of his Christmas presents)

 Tickles :) 

Hiking to the place with biggest waves! 

 Outside of Marsh's Museum a quirky place that has a "Human Shrunken Head" and "Alligator Man" and all kinds of other kooky old things.

For breakfast we went to Shelburne Inn an old adorable place. Both of their chefs were out sick so the owner cooked our meal and it was delicious! We took a tour after breakfast. I loved it.

www.theshelburneinn.com/

This is the hotel we stayed at. Their restaurant has a great view!  My parents got us the room for us to go on a honeymoon but it was nice to have it for this trip instead. 

I highly recommend this hotel! Their are always deals on livingsocial that make it very affordable! https://www.livingsocial.com/escapes/properties/71013-coastal-washington-beach-hotel-dining-credit

www.adrifthotel.com/