From cold to warm

Last week I saw a bunch of splashing in the water in front of our house, so we went down to the beach to investigate. It was a large "raft" of sea lions! (a raft is what you call a group of sea lions in the water.)

It was also a very low tide, so Meadow & Logan had fun in the mud trying to get squirted by a clam.
As you can tell it was very cold! The wind was blowing little snowflakes around us. But it was beautiful and very Alaskan with sea lions loudly barking (more like belching) around us!

But we soon left the cold and flew to Seattle for the week where it was sunny and warm!
Good little traveler Brennen gets his turn to wear the jet bib on the jet.

First we visited Point Defiance Zoo! The Beluga whales were the highlight of the day.

Logan really liked the tiger too. It was 80 degrees that day! (a bit too hot for me.)

Old Matthew

April 10th, Matthew turned 31!

We had a party at his parents house.

Dinner for Two

Today is my birthday. I'm an aged 32 years. I took the kids to Grandma & Grandpa Cooke's house and returned to find a romantically set table for two and Chef Matthew making a delicious Chinese dinner! He made sesame beef Shanghai Dumplings (from scratch!), hot and sour soup, beef lo mien, and an Asian salad! It was very delicious! We saved the leftovers to make for friends sometime. Matthew is taking the dumplings from the steamer to the hot oil.

It was very nice! He even cleaned up afterwards!

Our Anniversary

Monday was our 7th anniversary! We celebrated by going out to dinner and spending the night in Reno! (While the kids had fun staying with grandma John.) We sure do love our personal jet service!
Let me clarify, we did not go for the gambling, it was just one of the few places we could get to in one day that had room on the flight. (yes, our personal jets fly other people too.) And it was somewhere we've never been, and hoped there would be sun. There was sun, but it was about the same temperature as home!
Our room was nice. Matthew is trying out the flat screened TV. The bathroom was nice too- all marble tile- so I had to take a picture.
It was a nice relaxing little trip. We don't see the appeal in casinos and gambling. We couldn't even figure out how to play the slot machines! We went bowling instead.
Here we are in our limo heading back to the airport! Such is the life of us celebrities! (Actually, there was a problem with the shuttle bus, so we got an upgrade!)

Brennen's new toy

We feel it is important to teach our kids about modern technology from a young age so they will be able to keep up in this ever advancing world. So we got Brennen a new AT&T Palm Trio. It has many cool features and tastes great too! If you would like to call him or his daddy, he has a new local # (907) 821-8289. If you're calling locally you don't need to dial the area code. Here's my phancy phone. Yes, technology is a wonderful thing!

Happy Easter!

On Friday some of us mommies took our kids to the pool! I just took Meadow. She loved it! Here's Kristi & Hannah and Kristina & Rachel. Sarah & Eric B. and Mary were there with their kids too.

Easter Sunday was a lovely day. The kids have their daffodils from church. When they called the kids to come line up to put flowers in the cross, Meadow and Logan ran up & across the stage in great excitement! It was funny!

Later that evening grandma & grandpa Cooke came over and we went for a nice walk to the beach.

::::pictures::::

Here's a better picture of our van.Brennen has graduated from his cradle to a crib.
Naked driving. Should he get a ticket?
"I'm cowing!"
Ha ha! Get it? Clever Meadow!

Our New Van!

What a busy day! This morning, after getting excused from the jury, I had no idea we would be buying a van, but after 3 hours of negotiating with the dealers at Skinner's, we did! We just decided to get one locally so we don't have to pay $700 to have one shipped. It's a 2005 Chevy Uplander, which is one of the vans we liked during our searchings in Seattle. It's not blue, as my "dream van" would have been, (Yeah, I know..I'm not cool), but it's a nice brown color and has a DVD player, and a built-in child seat, and power opening doors. It's nice.We even got them to throw in 2 little monkeys wearing Chevy shirts for the kids!

Finally!

We finally sold our Jetta! After being up for sale for almost a year, being sold and fallen through twice, being falsely accused of loosing oil and the engine being "about to blow!", and even being stolen by an annoying highschooler to drive some girls over to Walmart -(oh so cool!), It has legitimately sold to a guy who will be working with Matthew at Ak Airlines. It went for only $8200, about $1000 less than it's worth, but at least it's done, and we can finally get our own van! We looked at several different kinds while we were south, and we think we like the Honda Odyssey the best. I used to want a Dodge Grand Caravan, but after having one as our rental car, we decided the newer ones aren't very nice. We're still not sure where we will get one though, as I am confined to Ketchikan this month for jury duty.
I hope this post isn't too long and boring, I just haven't been able to really talk to anyone for a long time because our house has been a sick ward this last month! First we all had the flu, now it's bad colds that won't go away! Anyway that's the latest news.

Yet Another Seattle Trip

We spent last weekend in Seattle, to visit Auntie Christy and long lost Grandma John, and also to help David & Jenn with moving. Christy got right to her usual auntie business of putting make-up on Meadow and dressing her like a princess! (Logan was saying, "me too!")We got a few extra days to hang out with our friends before they moved far, far away. Here we are at House of Hong, a great Chinese restaurant in downtown Seattle.
We even hung out with the Linders, and Trista & John! We went to Olive Garden for dinner.
The weather there was sunny and warm! There's a very nice park a couple blocks from Christy's house that we always go to. We had a picnic out in the sun. Brennen enjoyed the park from the comfort of his stroller.

Yet Another Seattle Trip continued...

A fun day with Grandma at the park. Logan loves to ride the "Quack".
Logan loves airplanes, so he was excited to get invited into the cockpit of our jet on our return flight. He wanted to go up and push some buttons, and got mad when I wouldn't let him! Flights during nap time are wonderful...for awhile anyway. Logan didn't sleep long enough, and SCREAMED and thrashed in my lap for the last half hour of the flight! I could feel the hatred silently burning from the people in front of us!
We arrived home to strong wind and freezing sideways rain. Matthew & I were completely soaked through by the time we loaded everyone into the car. Home Sweet Home!

We were on TV!

Our epspode of Deal or no Deal aired last night. Here we are in the background! There were just a few quick shots like this, but this was the best one with all 4 of us in it. We paused it and took a picture of the screen. (It looks stretched because of our TV.) It was amazing how edited the show was. When we were there, the guy was calling himself the king, which had something to do with the Burger King, and they put up a picture with him and the King, and even brought the Burger King into the audiance. On TV all of that was cut out. They told us it would be a special 90 minute show, but ended up being an hour, so I guess that's why. These were the two contestants, but I won't say which one got all the money because some people haven't watched yet. Also, Brennen has recently started enjoying rice cereal! He's such a big boy, growing up so fast! He went to the Dr. yesterday. He weighs 16lbs. 8 oz. and is 26" long!

Happy Groundhog's Day!

At Auntie Christy's house

Here's Auntie Christy recovering from surgery with her new purple cast.
We had a visit from Beth and Madeline and Owen! It was nice to see them again! She got to meet Logan and Brennen for the first time. Madeline enjoyed holding Brennen.

Deal or No Deal

Last week we got to attend a live taping of the game show Deal or no Deal! For those who maybe have never seen it, here's a picture. (Logan thought it was daddy!) The contestant chooses cases to open that contain different amounts of $ from 1 cent to $1,000,000. Each amount that is opened is eliminated. After each case opening session, the banker makes them an offer, trying to get them to leave with as little as possible. They can take the deal, or open more cases and risk eliminating the big $$. The strategy is in knowing when to get out. Most people get over-confident and greedy, and end up loosing out on a lot of money. Hopefully that was a good explanation. Anyway, it was fun to be there in the set! We had really good seats right up front, so we should be seen on TV a lot! Watching it in real life is a lot different than the show. First of all there's no music or sound effects. That's all added in later. They have the ladies walk out several times to get different shots, and do retakes throughout the show. There is a guy who is in the audience of every show, who leads us on when to clap, stand, or boo. During commercial breaks they give instructions on what's coming next, and do contests, like a spelling bee, and who's had the worst job, etc. We didn't participate in any of them.

Our show was a special episode of men vs. women "winner takes all", where two contestants play. The man played first but we had to leave before he finished. When we left, he was offered $123,000, and was deciding whether or not to take the deal. On our way out Helen and I met Tamika, one of the case models, in the bathroom of all places. Helen talked to her. That's our claim to fame. She seemed nice.

We don't know yet exactly when our show will air. We have to keep checking the website for our episode #. I think it will be around the end of February or beginning of March. We will record it for anyone who would like to see us on TV! "Oooh, how exhilarating!" -New York Times

Day trip to L.A.

I've always wanted to go somewhere (other than Seattle) for the day. Well we finally did it! Matthew & I, along with Helen & Jasen, started out early Wednesday morning, and flew to Los Angeles! We left the kids with my mom and Christy in Seattle. We went to attend a Deal or No Deal show! Unfortunately, this is the only picture I have of our trip. It was our first stop in L.A. -a hardware store of course! Here we are each buying a pair of $3 sunglasses. None of us thought to bring any, and when we arrived there was something big and very bright in the sky...I believe it was called sun! Our eyes couldn't handle it. The reason we didn't take any more pictures was because we were told not to bring cameras or cell phones to the studio or they wouldn't let us in. So, being good citizens, we left them in the car. Then we headed to the studio. We all dressed fairly nice, in case they decided to pick one of us for the show. Notice Matthew in all black. He thought I had spoiled his possible chance of getting on the show because I didn't pack black socks for him. That turned out to be the least of his fashion blunders. After walking 4 blocks looking for the studio, I realized we didn't have our tickets. So Matthew ran all the way back to the car, which was parked on the 8th floor of a parking garage. When he got back to us, he was dripping in sweat! Then we discovered we had gone in the wrong direction! Finally we found the studio, but were told the morning show was running late, so we should come back in about 2 hours. To wait it out, we went to cold stone and got some ice cream, which Matthew spilled down his pants! Then we found a nice bench to sit on under a tree. And guess what...a bird pooped on Matthew's shoulder! Finally we went back to the studio to get in line. They told us the show could take up to 6 hours, and they didn't like people to leave early, which meant we would miss our flight back! We decided to go in anyway and take our chances, since that was the whole point of coming to L.A. As we stood in line we saw that everyone had cell phones and were taking pictures with them! They just told everyone to turn them off inside. So much for rules. I wish we'd known that! Then we might have had some good pictures! Oh well!

(I'll write about the show in the next post so this doesn't get too long!)

Anyway, it turned out to be perfectly fine to leave the show early. They just brought in extra people to replace us, since they don't want empty seats. We ended up back at the airport just in time to catch our flight back to Seattle. By then we were all very tired and hungry and had headaches. I felt really sick the whole way back from exhaustion. (Up all night with children the night before!) But, overall it was a fun adventure!

Brennen's 1st flight

Brennen took his first flight this week! He was very good! He had to wait 3 months to fly. By this age, Meadow had already gone on about 10 flights! He's a very happy, sweet little lad! (BIG lad!)

Christmas Day

Ever since Meadow saw these in a catalog several months ago, she has wanted and fully expected to get a "back hoe" for Christmas. So Grandma and Grandpa John gave them each one (a battery operated excavator and loader with levers that really work!). Meadow gives her animals rides in it.

Meadow got a fun easel set from Grandma Cooke with paints and chalk.
After presents we have our traditional breakfast of ham, egg & cheese croissants topped with hollendaise sauce, made by chef Matthew.
Matthew made Meadow a nice twin size bed. The picture doesn't show it, but there are drawers along the bottom, and there will be a shelf headboard eventually. She liked it but when I checked on her for her first few times sleeping in it, she was back in her old bed which was still in her room in the closet! I guess she doesn't like change. She's more used to it now.
Then we went to the delicious feast at the Goulds. I guess next year I'll be the preparer of the Christmas feast at our house. It will probably take many years to get up to Sheila standards! But I've learned a lot from experiencing her many Christmas dinners and Sunday lunches!
Here are the hosts..with dad in the middle.

All 8 kids! From youngest to oldest. We should re-take this photo in 10 years!