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We arrived safely in Utah late Friday night.  On Saturday the weather was beautiful.  We visited with our great friends, the Kelsons, and the kids played out side with no coats and at times with no shoes.  The kids had so much fun that on the way home, Isaac told me that if we don’t ever move back into our old home (which we still own), then he would think I’m a bad mother.

Here’s what it looked like outside the next morning:

So those of you watching conference that noticed the spring flowers on Saturday and the Snow covered branches on Sunday, that’s just about what it is like.  The snow is melting quickly though, so who knows what tomorrow will be like.

We have been in the car since about 7:50 AM PST and now it is about 6 PM PST with many hours left to travel.

This will be my first blog post from the passenger seat of the car.  Here are some pictures:

Nicole held on to her backpack for the first part of our journey—she really loves that backpack!

Ila has gotten a little bored, but mostly she’s been fine.

Isaac tried to help navigate, but he didn’t know how to use that GPS well.

If you got any strange phone calls from me earlier today, this is probably why:

Also since it’s April Fools day we periodically see very strange things like monkeys jumping around on cows or our cats running along side the van (or at least the children believe us when when we say we see such things).  They even tried to get into the act by telling us about the crazy things they’ve seen.

Oh, and if you see this while we’re still on the road, you can check out where we are by clicking here.

You’ll have to click on read more to learn how she acquired this lovely eye decoration.

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Our Saturday outing on February 6th really wasn’t that exciting, but I didn’t want to miss a week in my reverse blogging.  I can’t remember what the original plan was, but we didn’t get our Saturday chores done soon enough so we decided to just take a trip to IKEA (just 3 miles away) with the family.  The little girls fell asleep before we were completely through the store:

Based on the other pictures I took that day, we also played with play dough on that Saturday.

Nicole’s favorite thing to do was to make bears and then have them complain about missing body parts.

Our Saturday outing for March 5th was the Lego Store.  We gave the kids opportunities to earn a little money during the week so that they could buy something on Saturday.  The Lego store was in a mall in Bellveue, WA.  I left my camera in the van so I only have pictures from my phone for this outing.

The store was crowded and Ila was a handful.  She just wanted to be free to explore on her own.  Charlotte was looking around for something to buy, but she couldn’t find a pink lego set so I asked her if she’d rather spend her money on Legos or Chocolate.  She wanted the Chocolate.  Before we got to the chocolate store, we saw a Jamba Juice and she wanted Juice even more than chocolate.  So she spent some of her money on a peach flavored Jamba.  Which she offered to share with her little sister.

We decided to complete our outing with some Sushi.  We took the kids to Blue C Sushi.  The kids thought it was great because the food came around on a conveyer belt and you just took what you wanted.  The plates are color coded and each color represents a price.   

On March 12th, we went to the Renton Library for our Saturday outing.  This library is neat because it’s also a bridge:

It looks like a normal building when you pull into the parking lot, but then you walk around to the entrance (pictured above) and it’s almost startling to see that you’re right on top of the Cedar River.

There’s not much else to say about this outing, but here are some pictures;

Here is Isaac picking out books with his dad.  He ended up with a selection that included books about the Pueblos, the pyramids, electrical circuits, and frogs.

We’ve started going on family outings every Saturday and I’ve meant to document them here, but I have not done a good job.  I will start with this last weekend’s adventure and work my way backwards.

We thought the kids would enjoy a ride on the Ferry into Seattle.  We drove to Bremerton, took the Ferry across, then drove home from Seattle.

We drove across the Tacoma Narrows Bridge:

We ate our lunch (sandwiches) in the car as we waited for the Ferry.

We rode on a ferry named Kitsap that boarded at 12:20.

I think the whole family really enjoyed our ferry ride experience and it was neat to see the skyline as we approached the city.  This was the only shot we got of the entire family:

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I had a half a banana leftover and no one wanted to eat it, that is until I cut it up and put a chocolate chip on each slice.  The pieces looked like eyes so I got this idea:

Charlotte loved it and we’ve had this snack everyday since it’s inception.

My kids love to celebrate holidays.  Really, they love to celebrate anything and admittedly, I find great joy in creating excitement and doing fun or unusual things.  So while I think I generally like the Irish, any celebrating we do on St. Patrick’s Day is really more for the joy of celebrating.

That being said, we really didn’t do much.  I just turned some food green and we wore green, but it was enough to make the day a little more fun and enough to throw up a quick blog post.  So what did I turn green?  I made a loaf of green bread.  I turned this morning’s eggs green, and I turned Isaac’s apple sauce green.  Is that really worth a blog post, probably not.

Green Bread (I added food coloring at the same time I was adding flour):

Isaac’s Green lunch:

Green Breakfast (I also colored his milk green, but I think that was too much, no one really wanted to drink green milk)

We were excited to join Rochelle and her daughter for a trip to the Seattle Science Center.  We went on a free admission (thanks to Fred Meyer) day.  It was nice to get to know Rochelle and see all the neat exhibits. This post is really picture heavy, so you’ll have to click on the link to read more (I didn’t want it to take over my blog).

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We’ve had many invitations for playdates and outings since moving to Washington just under two months ago.  It’s been great fun. 

On a recent Thursday, Jessica called us up to see if we wanted to go on an impromptu outing to a place called Gym Starz. 

The kids had a lot of fun climbing and jumping and running and I enjoyed getting to know Jessica and her cute family a little better.  Unfortunately, I didn’t take any pictures of our kids together, maybe next time.

Ila’s hair is getting long enough to be messy.  Here is her hair after a nap the other day:

I promise that I embellished nothing.  I think she may be entering that awkward in-between stage that all my straight-haired girls have gone through.  This is when I get impatient for pigtail length hair.

Here’s Nicole at that awkward hair length":

Here’s Charlotte:

This is how Nicole eats an apple:

She starts on one side and eats straight through to the seeds.  Notice that she ate the bottom of the apple.  When she gets to the middle she spits out any parts that she doesn’t like.

Today, I got out some butter to use in our dinner, but I had to go help a child before I could get started.  On my way back to the kitchen, I encountered Nicole holding my stick of butter and preparing to take a second bite.  She was very mad when I took the butter away:

If it was Ila, I probably would have let her eat the butter—she needs the calories (She weighed in at 16 lbs with her diaper and all her clothes on at the Doctor’s last week).

Somewhat Related Comment:  One day I heard Charlotte tell Isaac:  “I know how to turn an apple into an apple core.”

Name:  Charlotte Rose Cochran

Age: 5 years, 2 months, 3 weeks, 1 day (on 3/8/11)

Weight: 36 lbs 25th percentile

Length:   40”      5th percentile

I had originally scheduled her for an appointment in TN before we left, but the nurse suggested waiting till after the new year so that her visit could be in the same calendar year that she starts kindergarten.

She was very nervous and sad about the immunizations.  For about two days afterwards she complained that her legs hurt, but she felt much better after some Ibuprophen.  Now the pain is gone and all she has left are a few small bruises where the shots were.

Also, for some reason she likes to randomly say “banana” at various unpredictable times during the day. (I realize that sentence is redundant, but I’ll let it stand).

Isaac asked if he could hang a post-it note on the bulletin board in the office.  I told him yes, and later found this note posted:

A little while later he wanted me to see what he had made on his Lego Creator:

They made my day!

I think I’ll split this up over a few posts so that I can be more detailed (especially for those family members that may not get the chance to come visit)

This is the view when you step in the front door:And if you walked straight and turned around, this is what it looks like from the opposite side:

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My kids wake up early.  I am not always as eager to start my day.  In fact, I think there should be a rule against getting up before 8 AM on a holiday.  Isaac had two days off for President’s Day. On the second day, Ila had woken up at her usual time which is around 4 am and I had brought her downstairs to the couch where I could nurse her and fall asleep.  We were both still resting on the couch at around 6:30 AM when Isaac and Nicole came down.  Isaac had a book and was reading it aloud at the table and Nicole was not yelling to be fed, so I was content to lay on the couch and cuddle my baby a little longer.

The next thing I knew, there was a bright blue flash and Nicole running down the hall crying.  I immediately jumped up and made sure she was ok.  I could find no injuries and she calmed down and acted like herself. 

Once she was settled, I checked out the damage.  This is basically what I saw (I cleaned the plug plate before taking the picture):

I felt terrible and beat myself up much of the day for being so lazy.  I don’t know if she actually got shocked or just dropped the bracelet onto the plug and ran down the hall crying out of fear.  All I know is that the plug and bracelet were partially melted, the socket was charred, and the breaker was tripped.

I said a prayer of thanks that she was ok and that there was no serious injury.  I threw out all of the little silver bracelets in the house, and for the rest of the day I found myself hugging her and recognizing how grateful I was to have her happy and healthy and in my family.

(This picture is of Nicole “feeding” cereal to her Plush Curious George toy)