Kent Cornucopia Days

After living here more than three years we finally ventured out and experienced Kent Cornucopia Days.  The basically close up downtown Kent and have blocks of vendors, food and activities.  There were a ton of people and not a lot for the kiddos to do.  The highlight, at least for Kenzie, was getting her face painted.  It turned out really well.  We were probably there for 3 hours when we had to leave suddenly.  We were at a Greek restaurant when Dillon swallowed a piece of candy.  It hurt him so bad that he was in tears and dry heaving at the same time so we thought we should leave.  Oh well, maybe we'll go back in another three years!

4th of July 2011

 We have started a fun tradition for the 4th of July.  The last two years our 4th of July consists of two days basically.  First of all this year we went down to Tenino to Natalie's uncle's house where some of Natalie other uncle and aunts were staying for the weekend.  Of course, we can't go down to Tenino without taking a ride on Uncle Ron's army truck.  Dillon and Kenzie get much more of a kick from it that Natalie and I, but it's still fun cruising through town. 

 Kenzie and especially Dillon sure had a fun time with Natalie's cousin Jarred.  Dillon is currently 6 and I believe Jarred is 8, so they hit it off really well.  Those two were basically inseparable the entire time.  We just let them roam through the acres of property.  Needless to say, Dillon slept really well on the ride home.

Above, Dillon and Kenzie chase after one of the parachute fireworks.

Tenino was on July 3rd and on July 4th we headed out to Enumclaw and the Lindstrom's house. Even though almost everyone there is related, we still fit in just fine with all 50 people there.  Our tradition includes lots of food, swimming, a 100-foot slip'n'slide and finally the mother-load of all fireworks.  We didn't take too many pictures this year, but here are a few videos. 

We did have one unfortunate event this year, as you can see in the video below.  They had lit of a firework that shot off multiple parachutes.  Well after the first shot went off the firework tipped over causing the second parachute to come flying out horizontally.  Kenzie was unfortunate enough to get shot in the behind with a parachuter.  Luckily she was fine after a few minutes.  Somebody had found a little frog hopping around and gave it to her which helped calm her down pretty quickly. 

Almost Forgot....Turned 30 in March

In March I turned the big 30...and so did some of my friends in the ward, so our wives threw us a "surprise" birthday party.  The theme was Angry Birds, as you can probably figure out from the photos below.  Somewhat depressing turning 30, but at least the party was fun!

Catching Up

 It's been awhile since I've posted a blog, so I thought I'd post a few pictures.We really haven't done too much in the last six months.  Work had been extremely busy all year, so we haven't had much time to get out and explore.  Hopefully that will change soon as I have hired my first two employees in the last 3 months.  That should allow us to get out of the area more. 

 Dillon and Kenzie both had "fun" experiences at the dentist.  Dillon had his tooth pulled and Kenzie had a bunch of cavities.  Unfortunately, they had to put her under to do all her dental work.  Everything went smoothly, but now she has some shiny silver teeth.

Baseball has consumed our life these last two months.  Kenzie is in her first year of T-Ball and Dillon is in his first year of Toss Ball.  Dillon isn't the biggest fan of playing baseball, but Kenzie loves it.  They both do a really good job....when they pay attention :-)  

 In March Jake got married in the Tri-Cities, so it was nice to get out of town and see all our family members again.  Heidi is getting married at the end of June, so we will once again get to meetup with everybody. 

Kenzie has been doing ballet for a few months now and yesterday had her ballet recital.  She did a wonderful job.  She sure seems to enjoy dance and does a really good job.  Maybe she will be a dancer when she grows up! 

Well that's about it for now.  Hopefully my next post will a little more exciting! 

2011 Seattle Mariners Fanfest

 On Saturday we headed to Safeco Field to attend Mariner's Fanfest with our friends the Wagners.  It's a two-day event, so I though showing up right when it opened would guarantee us one of the 500 vouchers to get autographs from Felix Hernandez, but was I sure wrong!  The autograph line stretched a block and a half!  My dreams were crushed quickly, so we jumped into the non-autograph line, which was only about a half-of-a-block long.  Next time we go I know I'll need to get there at least an hour early if I want to get a good autograph. Here are some pictures and videos of our day.

The kids standing in line outside Safeco Field. 

Natalie and Anderson (under the blanket) overlooking Safeco Field.

One of the three events needed to complete the activity book which entitled each of us to spin a wheel for prizes.  I didn't get a picture of the wheel but we won two youth jerseys (Guitierrez), two tote bags, and one Mariner's hand towel. 

Here are the kids participating in the Home Run Obstacle.  I think it was their favorite activity of the day.

While in line waiting to get down onto the field, we were lined up at the bullpen.  All of a sudden this guy showed up and started pitching around 95 mph.  Turns out this is Michael Pineda, one of the top prospects in all of the minor leagues.  As luck turned out, when it was our turn to enter the field, he came out of the bullpen and bumped into us.  We grabbed our baseballs and got him to give us his autograph.  Maybe one day that baseball will be worth a lot of money! 

Anderson posing for the camera. 

Fanfest Guide

Again, while waiting in line to get on the field we were lined up in front of the dugout.  A group of four pitchers showed up.  I recognized two of them being Jason Vargas and Brandon League, but I couldn't figure out who the other two were. 

Jason Vargas

We finally got down onto the field to have a chance to hit the ball over the fence.  Here are some videos of our attempts. 

And finally my turn....hit it over on my first try!

One final video from field level:

Christmas 2010 - Part 2 (Gordons)

We made it to the cabin on Lake Cascade (Idaho) around 6 PM Christmas Eve.  It was beautiful there.  Snow was everywhere, the lake was frozen over and mountains overshadowed the valley. The cabin was perfect and had plenty of room for 27 people and a dog. Here are some pictures of our events at the cabin:

Anderson and Cole playing together as babies. Anderson apparently had the instinct to claim his territory early on, as he peed on Cole during a diaper change.

Dillon looking at the contents of his stocking from Santa. 

Kenzie and her stocking.

We went sledding on the golf course in Cascade.  Behind Kenzie is Lake Cascade frozen over.  Uncle Jay even rode one of the four-wheelers on the lake (I wussed out on that one).  

Dillon pulling his sled up the big hill.  My guess is that the hill was about four stories high.  A great sledding hill!

Kenzie posing on the four-wheeler.  We all enjoyed our winter drives on the four-wheelers.  Kenzie and I did manage to get stuck within view of our cabin though.  After 5 minutes though, we finally dug our self out.  

The Gordon tradition of the Christmas Ball.  Our kids loved it!

My awesome glasses as a result of the Christmas Ball.  

Uncle Spencer...enough said.  

Before church on Sunday we posed for a family picture.  

And we posed for a silly picture too.

Another Gordon tradition of reenacting Christmas Bible scenes. 

We had a wonderful time at the cabin.  Thank you to Grandma and Grandpa Gordon for putting this together. Our kids are already ready to go back! 

Christmas 2010 - Part 1 (Bradshaws)

Our Christmas vacation consisted of over 1200 miles of driving and 11 days total.  We had a great time and our three kids did awesome in the car.  Here was our schedule:

Tuesday December 21st - Leave Kent for Kennewick
Friday December 24th - Leave Kennewick for Cascade, ID
Monday December 27th - Leave Cascade, ID for Kennewick
Saturday January 1st - Leave Kennewick for Kent

We spent Christmas Eve and day in Cascade with the Gordons (another post to come) and the rest of the trip with the Bradshaws in Kennewick.   Santa showed up in Cascade with the kid's stockings but left all the presents at the Bradshaw house for the kids to open when we returned.  Here are some pics of our portion with the Bradshaw side. 

 We built a snowman and later painted it blue and orange for the BSU vs. Utah game later that day.  Grandpa had to show the kids his Halloween costume. 

 Everyone together for a meal before Christmas

Anderson looking good. 

Little miss Kenzie sneaking treats out of the kitchen :-)

Opening presents.  Kenzie loved this doll!  It drinks, cries and pees.  What else could you want from a doll.  

Thank you Eliza for some of these photos! 

Also, while in Kennewick we decided to go bowling.  Here are some videos of Dillon and Kenzie's first time bowling:

 

Here is one of Natalie's favorite videos from our trip.  After watching "A Minute to Win It" on TV, some of the Bradshaw's decided to try the cookie challenge on their own. 

We did spend New Years Eve in Kennewick, but don't really have any pictures.  I guess for the most part it was rather uneventful.  My parents bought us a Wii for Christmas so we hooked that up and the kids played it for hours upon hours.  Dad and I were really enjoyed playing disc golf in the comfort of our home.  By midnight it ended up just being me, my dad, Dillon, Heidi and Brad (her boyfriend).

We sure had a fun trip and couldn't have wished for better road conditions.  

The Week Before Christmas in Kent

So we plan on going to Kennewick and Boise for Christmas, so there should be another blog post in the near future, but until then I thought I'd show some pictures of what we did this week.  We had a crazy storm these last few days.  It rained something like 4 inches in 48 hours so below is a picture showing just how much rain we've had.  There have been floods, mudslides, downed trees and just plain craziness. 

 Okay, so we had plans this weekend to hang out with some friends before we took off for Christmas vacation, but Dillon came down with a nasty cough!  We decided not to take the risk of passing his germs to other people, so we hung out as a family.  I always love downtown Seattle at night, so we loaded up the kids and drove through downtown.  We've lived here 3 years and never have seen the troll under the Aurora Bridge, so we made a quick little detour.  Dillon loved it!  Kenzie, was scared and cried the whole time and Anderson...well...he didn't really do anything.  At this time Dillon was coughing terribly and we thought we might have to go home, but Natalie found someone's purse that was left behind.  We grabbed it to find the owner and luckily inside was a bag of cough drops!  I hope the people don't mind!

 Next we headed over to the U-District/Ravenna neighborhoods to a little loop called Snowflake Loop.  The pictures didn't turn out too well, but you can kind of see what was going on.  The kids really enjoyed it. 

 Next we headed back to Kent to the downtown plaza and carousel.  We had gone to the carousel earlier in the day and since the kids had so much fun (and it only cost $1 per kid), we headed back to see it at night.  This time all the lights were lit up in the plaza.  By this time it was dang cold, so we didn't spend much time there. 

Oh, and I forgot to mention.  Coming back from Seattle we stopped in Burien and went to a hamburger place called B-Town Burgers.  It was excellent and within our budget!