Annual Buzzing of the Heads

For the 2nd year in a row, Dillon and I buzzed our heads for the summer. He looks cuter than I do!

Our 5th Anniversary (May 17th)

Today was our 5-year anniversary. It's crazy to think how fast five years has gone by. I would have to say, it has been the best five years of my life! My wife is the most amazing woman I have ever met. She is my queen, even though I don't always treat her like one. I guess what's even more amazing is that she has put up with me for five years!

To celebrate our anniversary we didn't do anything too exciting, but it was perfect. We've been in Seattle almost two months now and haven't really been to downtown Seattle, so for our anniversary we took an afternoon trip downtown. We first went to Pike's Place Market. It was awesome how many hills there were downtown. We thought that the market was right on the waterfront, so we parked at a garage and went down a 5-story flight of stairs only to find out that it was not in fact on the waterfront, but at least now we know where the Aquarium is!!! We then hiked up at least 5-stories of stairs and entered Pike's market. Initially we were very disappointed as we journeyed into some of the shops inside. After awhile we found the outside market and then we loved it! One thing we are learning about Seattle is that it doesn't get too hot here, so air conditioning is rare. Unfortunately for us today it was 90 degrees outside, so it was very uncomfortable.

At the market we purchased a picture to put in a frame that an artist did of various Seattle landscapes. We also purchased flowers for Natalie. The flowers there are awesome! Normally a bouquet would cost around $40, but we got a very nice bouquet of flowers for only $10!

After Pike's Market, we drove to the Space Needle, but parking was too much money so we just drove by. We then headed to Alki beach to check out the scenery. Once again, Alki beach was crazy! After Alki we went to a Chinese restaurant in Des Moines that was very good! That was basically our day. Not too exciting, but we had a great time...especially since there were no kids!

Saltwater State Park & Dash Point State Park

So far we've lived in the Seattle area for about a month and have found two beaches on Puget Sound that we love. The first one is Saltwater State Park, which is only about 5 minutes from our house. It's a rocky beach, but it's great at low tide since it creates a lot of little tide pools. In the tide pools we are able to catch tiny little crabs, about the size of a silver dollar. One time when we were there one kid caught a huge crab, but we haven' seen any that big.

The other beach is Dashpoint State Park. The one time we've been there we literally found thousands and thousands of Sand Dollars. We brought a few of them home with us...which ended up stinking up our whole house.

Mother's Day 5/11/08

Today was Mother's Day. I would say overall we did a good job for Natalie this year...and by "us" I mean "me". The bad news is that the Mother's Day present we ordered her did not get here in time, but we did some fun things to make up for it. Dillon and Kenzie were sick today, so we sent mom to church by herself, which actually worked out for us. We cleaned up the house for her and also Dillon and Kenzie colored a "Happy Mother's Day" paper for her. We taped the papers to the door, so when she got home she had a nice surprise. Also for a surprise we..and again I mean I...made her one of her favorite meals: pork chops with red mashed potatoes. I tried a new recipe with a sour cream type gravy that was actually very good. To top everything off, I even changed Kenzie's poopy diaper! Overall it was a good day!

Below is a picture of my lovely wife. It was not taken on Mother's Day...since our batteries in the camera died, but it's still a beautiful picture of a beautiful lady!

Alki Beach & Saltwater State Park - April 2008

This weekend my mom, dad and Heidi came up from Kennewick and visited us for the weekend. They actually went up to Canada earlier in the week for Heidi’s Spring Break and came to our house on the way home. We had such a great time. For the 3 weeks that we’ve been here in Seattle it has been rather cold and rainy, but on Saturday it got up to 75 degrees and was sunny. We went to two beaches: Alki beach and Saltwater State Park. Alki Beach is just south of Seattle and is a long skinny beach that has the Seattle skyline in the background. It was very beautiful and had a California feel to it. The only problem was that everyone in Seattle decided to go there the same day as us! It was crazy how many people were there. We were fortunate enough to find a parking space and we’re able to walk around a little bit. Dillon and Kenzie loved being by the water and especially being outside. After Alki, we went to Saltwater State Park which is only about 5 miles west of our apartment. It’s a rocky beach, but the tide was so far out that it had a lot of room to walk. You are not supposed to take sea shells off the beach there, so it’s literally lined with thousands of sea shells. The best part of this beach was that the tide has left little water pools along the beach that were full of sea life when you got close enough. Dillon and I caught about 5 crabs (about the size of a quarter) and held them in our hands. It was really neat! Also we were standing along the beach and all of a sudden we heard a loud sound. Natalie was fortunate enough to see what made the loud sound: a Sea Lion. Apparently it swan about 20 yards from the shore, stuck it’s head out of the water and was frightened by all the people and left.

Some Of My Favorite Pictures

Kent, WA - March 2008 - ???

(April 13, 2008). Well we made the move from Meridian/Boise to Kent and so far we are having a good time. It’s been a hard transition from a 4-bedroom house to a 3-bed room apartment, but the kids sure enjoy having a playground right out our back door. It’s just too bad that it’s not a little bit sunnier and warmer. We are in a section of Kent that is commonly referred to “The Lakes” which is a series of apartments and townhomes surrounded by little lakes or ponds. It sure makes for some pretty walks. It is also quite the transition going from $400 a month rent to $1050, but we really had no choice. The move went well…mainly due to the help of my parents. They were so helpful! They came all the way to Boise and helped us clean our house and then drove the truck with us to Seattle. It was great having them around! It was sure a pain driving a 26’ truck and pulling our car behind it. So far I’m really enjoying my job with Pointe Pest Control. It’s a much different work environment than I’m used to. I’ve never had a job where I have a Nintendo Wii at work! Here’s a picture of our apartment building:

Bradshaw's Garden Valley Trip - May 2007

For a summer trip all of us Bradshaw’s headed up to Garden Valley, about an hour north of Boise, for a few days. Jen had a customer who owned a cabin up there and let us use it for free. For the most part it was somewhat boring as there was not much to do around Garden Valley/Crouch, but it had it’s moments. Dillon and I decided to go on a walk to meet my parents as they arrived. We walked to the end of the street and there was a house with three dogs. They started barking at us, but we just walked by. Well after awhile my parents didn’t show up so we started walking back to the cabin. Well this time the dogs were not as nice. They all started barking and coming toward us so we turned around. They basically stranded us on the corner. I tried calling Kyle who was at the cabin, but cell phones didn’t work in the mountains. After being stranded for about an hour, I finally flagged down a car and had them give us a ride back to the cabin. About 5 minutes later my parents showed up!

Another funny story was that in the basement they had a pool table. My dad, Kyle and Tyler were playing pool and I was lying in the other room. All of a sudden we heard quite the commotion. We ran into the room where they were playing pool and there was a bat flying around. Everyone was either ducking or trying to hit it with their pool ques. I think Kyle finally hit it and put it outside. There was some type of electrical room and that’s where the bat came from.

Here’s some pictures of us standing in front of the river as a family.

Mackenzie LaRee Bradshaw - August 21, 2006

First a son and now a daughter! I didn’t know what to think about a little girl, but she was beautiful! Again, I don’t remember the specifics about her being born, like weight, height, time etc., but I do remember this beautiful baby girl coming out with a full head of hair! People couldn’t believe how much hair she had! The delivery was much easier with Kenzie. With Dillon it took hours on hours until he finally popped on out, but Kenzie was a planned inducement and Natalie was only in labor for a few hours. Not being around children a lot, I just assumed that she would be much like Dillon as a baby, but I could not be more wrong. Those two were complete opposites in almost everything. When Dillon was a baby, he basically slept through the night right away. Kenzie on the other hand was not to keen on this whole sleeping through the nigh much to the dismay of her parents. Even though she cried a lot more and didn’t sleep through the night, we still loved her. Here are some pictures of her as a baby:

Meridian, Idaho - May 2006 - March 2008

In May of 2006 we had a great opportunity to move to a much bigger place. Jay Walker worked for a developer who had a house sitting on some land they were going to develop in a few years and needed someone to basically rent the home to pay the property taxes. He offered us the place and we took it! We moved from our 2 bedroom apartment to a 4-bedroom house with a garage and an acre of grass. It was so nice to have so much room. The only downside to the house was that we had to do all repairs and maintain the yard. The people who lived there prior didn’t take care of the place at all, so I spent countless hours cleaning and painting to make it more livable. Also coming from a smaller apartment we didn’t have a lot of furniture for a house, so we spent a lot of money buying furniture and appliances. Luckily around the same time we were moving into our house, Natalie’s parents were getting ready to move to Beaumont, Texas so we inherited a lot of their r stuff. Needless to say, we were very grateful!

Dillon loved to play outside, especially with the hose and in his swimming pool. Natalie would let him run around naked!

The 2^nd summer at our house we planted our first garden. We grew beans, cucumbers, corn, carrots and zucchini. Dillon enjoyed hanging out in the garden with his mommy. Sometimes we would even go out there all alone and pull weeds. He would also run to the garden and scare the birds away!

Yellowstone & Island Park - July 2005

Another trip we took that summer was to Island Park in Eastern Idaho and Yellowstone. We went with Brandon and Aubri Johns and Ricky and Tamara Southwick. We were fortunate enough to have a very rich Bishop who had a huge cabin in Island Park that allowed us to use it for a few days. Here are two pictures of his cabin. It was huge!!! If I had to guess I would say it was close to 6,000 square feet, if not bigger.

From Island Park, it was only about an hour drive or so to Yellowstone. We decided just to do a day trip, so we didn’t really see too much of Yellowstone. We did see one coyote running alongside our car and also saw about 10 buffalo. It was terribly windy and cold, so we stayed in our car quite a bit. We did manage to see Old Faithful and a few other geysers.

Gordon Family Reunion - July 2005 - Alturas Lake

In July 2005, we took our first camping trip w/ Dillon. We had a Gordon family reunion at Alturas Lake in Idaho (near Redfish lake). I’ve never been much of a camper, and the thought of taking Dillon with us not even being one yet, made it much less desirable, but for the most part it was pretty fun. The Rupps, Walkers and Murrays were all there, but also a lot of Natalie’s cousins and aunts and uncles on the Gordon side that I had not met yet. It was a little akward though, because one of Natalie’s cousins was there , who was gay, with his partner. It was a little weird seeing them put suntan lotion on each other, but oh well. Dillon actually did very well camping and loved eating the dirt! One thing I remember is that Spencer wanted to take care of Dillon for a little bit. I was a little nervous to allow this because of Dillon’s fascination with dirt eating, but we let Spencer have him. Dillon was laying on the picnic table bench (why, I don’t know) and fell off into the dirt. Also, when we were putting up our tent we found a little matchbox car that had been buried in the dirt for who-knows how long. Dillon wanted it so bad that we gave it to him. It is now 2008 and he still plays with that car. Also, Dillon was deathly afraid of the water. We’d hold him above the water, but when ever his feet would touch that water, he would freak out. Although, he did enjoy seeing the little minnows swimming around. Here are some pictures from our camping trip.