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!
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!
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.
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!
We received an email deal from Great Wolf Lodge so we decided to take the hour trip to Grand Mound, WA and stay at Great Wolf Lodge for a night. It was awesome! We went with our friends the Browns. We only stayed for one night, but we definitely got our moneys worth. Jaron Brown and I have wonderful wives that allowed us to go do "guy" things, which basically included going down the "scary" slides. To be honest, there was only one slide that one could put in the scary category. It was called the Howlin' Tornado. You'd sit in a tube that held up to four people and then go down a pitch black tube. All of a sudden you'd go down a 3-story drop into a half/full pipe thing. It was great, but the 5-story climb to get to it over and over was somewhat tolling on the knees. I was sure impressed with Dillon. He's only 6, but he went on every water slide, except the Tornado. The kids also enjoyed story time in the lobby. We did have somewhat of a scary moment in our hotel room of all places. Jaron was reenacting a humorous kicking motion that Kenzie had done and while doing it he failed to notice Kenzie running to him from behind. He wacked her with the heal of his foot right on her nose. We thought for sure something was broken, but she ended up being okay. Other than that, this was an amazing trip. Hopefully we can make this an annual trip!
We didn't take many pictures, and the ones we took didn't turn out too well, so here are the best ones we have!
Yesterday we celebrated Dillon and Kenzie's birthdays. We ended up renting out the clubhouse at our complex which turned out really well. Initially we were planning on having about 25 kids and about the same amount of adults, but only half showed up. That happened to be the perfect amount. Activities included pin the tail on the donkey, a pinata, opening presents and some good ol' cake and ice cream. The kids just loved running around and playing in the gym so we didn't need to do too much.
Name: Anderson "Andy" Gordon Bradshaw Date: August 6, 2010 Time: 1:30 PM ish Weight: 9 lbs 3 oz Height: 20.5 inches
The story: Natalie was a week past her due date and getting very anxious to have this baby. Her next appointment wasn't scheduled until the 6th, but could just not wait anymore so she called the doctor's office and got in on the 4th. At that appointment the doctor gave here the okay to be induced, but she needed to contact the hospital to see if they had a bed available. She was informed to call them Thursday (the 5th) starting at 6 AM. Well 6 AM arrived and they told her to call back at 9 AM. At 9 AM they told her to call back at 1 PM. At 1 PM they told her to call back at 5 PM and at 5 PM she was informed to call back tomorrow. Apparently everyone in the Seattle area decided to have their baby at the same time as there were no beds available! We were pretty disappointed that we were not able to have our baby on Thursday.
Well Friday morning arrived and I was awaken by Natalie informing me that she was in labor and we needed to go the hospital ASAP. I complied, but a little slower than she wanted. We got to the hospital at 6 AM and went to triage. In triage she was in a lot of pain and having contractions roughly every 3 minutes, but she was only dilated to a 3. They made her walk around for about in hour in terrible pain and then they finally admitted us to delivery.
We were lucky and were admitted to room # 2307, which the nurses refer to as "the suite" as it was larger and a little bit nicer than the other rooms. It was also a corner room with a great view of the valley. Anyways, around 8:30 she received her epidural and then the waiting game started. Her doctor, Keri Brown, came by around 10:00 and she was dilated to a 5 at that time. Her doctor then returned exactly at noon and broke Natalie's water to get things going. 1:00 rolled around and it was time to start pushing and by 1:30 little (maybe not so little) Anderson was born. The actual pushing part of labor was more difficult than Kenzie, but she was induced, and much much easier than Dillon. Natalie did a great job and didn't swear at me the entire time!
Anderson and mommy were just fine. Nothing out of the ordinary and he had great color. He was very mellow too. In fact he cried much more when they took his foot prints than he did when they gave him shots. However, he was not a fan at all of his first bath!
We were very luck to have Natalie's mom staying with us, so we didn't have to worry about the kids at all. Around 4:00 Grandma Gordon brought Dillon and Kenzie to the hospital to meet their brother for the first time. They loved him and were very soft and gentle.
The next morning we were surprised when Grandma and Grandpa Bradshaw and Heidi showed up. Apparently they drove up that night, stayed in a hotel and surprised us in the morning. Heidi had to work later that day, so they were only able to stay until 11:30 or so.
I should say that this whole time we had not chosen a name for Anderson. We started with a few names we liked and by Friday afternoon we had narrowed it down to Elijah, Jamison or Anderson. In the end, and in the nick of time, we chose Anderson. Why, we really don't know, but we liked it.
A little before 3:00 PM on Saturday (the 7th) we were discharged from the hospital. It is now about 6:00 PM as I write this and things are going well. We are excited to have this cute little baby in our life and look forward to the adventures he will bring us!
