Little Lad

Brennen is a very sweet little lad. Actually he's quite a BIG lad! He's 20lbs already, and 28" long! He'll be 7 months old next week on the 2nd. Time goes by so fast! He's really good at sitting up now without using his hands for balance, which is nice because he can finally sit and play with toys!
He loves playing outside too! He likes to feel the grass, unlike Logan who hated the feel of it last summer!

Happy Birthday Logan!

Logan is 2!

We had the grandparents over for a party last night. (Mommy was recovering from a bad case of the 24 hour flu, so we kept it simple this year.)

Logan wanted a blue cake with boats on it. He ate lots of frosting! For presents he got Legos and a track for battery operated jeeps to go on! (I think Matthew had the most fun with it, and kept playing with it after the kids went to bed!)

The life of a V.I.P.

Once again lucky Matthew won tickets to a soccer game which we got to watch from the comfort of the Alaska Airlines suite at Quest Field! It was Mexico vs. China. The stadium was almost full and all of them were for Mexico. We only saw 3 people in all the crowd with Chinese flags. We felt like we were in Mexico walking around the stadium before the game. This picture is Mexico's first attempt at a goal.
The game wasn't very exciting. Mexico won with one goal. Matthew said if he'd been watching the game on TV, he would have turned it off because they were playing rubbishly.
But we sure enjoyed sitting in the suite with only about 10 other people, (although by the end of the game the room had mysteriously filled up with Mexicans!) We had comfy chairs, our own bathrooms, and appetizers! This video clip shows it. Just don't listen to me talking. I sound like a chicken.

Such is the life of us V.I.P.'s!

More from Seattle

One of the highlights of the trip for Meadow was riding a carousel.
I decided to get a professional fix for my attempt at Logan's haircut. Flying an airplane, watching cartoons, and sucking a lollipop, was all it took to get him to sit still enough!
On Wednesday, our last full day there, Grandma Cooke came to visit, and help Auntie Christy babysit so we could go to our soccer game!
Brennen loved finally being able to play at the playground!
We stayed with Auntie Christy, but unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of her this time, or of her lovely, newly decorated guest room.

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!