Michael's Birthday

 There's been a lot that has gone on in the Bailey household since my post on Lily's birthday.  A Bailey women's retreat at Park City, Utah followed by a 7 day stay in ID, a cousin wedding, watching two of my nieces for a week, family coming in and out of town, YM's High Adventure, a Hsu family vacation to Mtn. Rainier, a mini Leavenworth getaway for my birthday with just Luke and I, school starting, Fall festivities with lots of pumpkin fun, developing varicose veins due to pregnancy, diagnosed with gestational diabetes, becoming involved in the stake choir/orchestra for a Veteran's Day celebration, Luke and I both committing to singing in the Forgotten's Carol choir for the show the day before Thanksgiving up here in Seattle, and now Michael's Birthday.  There are lots of fun pictures that will remind me of these hectic days, however, I will probably not be posting on these events that have already occurred.
 Yesterday was Michael's 2nd birthday.  The morning started out with double rehearsals for Luke and I, however, we made sure that he still had a very special day.  We came home shortly before lunch and decided to take the family out to Jack in the Box.  I know, not healthy nor very celebratory, but we got him a shake and since we rarely go to fast food restaurants it was fresh and fun for him.  Afterwards we came home and I decorated his cake.  So, nothing superbly fancy with different shapes, nor was it perfect, but it was still fun and Michael LOVED it.  He loves trains. :)
 That night Luke mentioned that the Spanish branch invited our family to their ward Latino celebration for the evening, so we decided to go and check it out.  Luke made friends with some of the members of the ward over a year and a half ago at a baptism and have been playing volleyball with them once a week ever since.  The celebration was WONDERFUL!  There were LOTS of yummy authentic dishes (some we haven't even heard of or tried before) and the people were so friendly.  After we had dinner they put on an amazing show full of fun traditional dances.  Michael absolutely loved the dancing.  Then there was a really amazing band and they were so incredibly talented.  We had to leave after just 1 song played by the band, which was unfortunate, but it was already 8:30pm.  So we came home and had cake and Michael opened his present.
 Poor Michael doesn't have very many boy toys.  He's been playing tea set and dress up and we've just felt really bad.  So, we got him something that we thought he'd enjoy.  It was a hit, the boy absolutely LOVES it!    Happy Birthday to my bundle of joy!  You might be a crazy little kid, but you sure make me smile. :)

Lily's 6th Birthday Party

 Lily's birthday was two months ago.  It was the weekend right after school ended on 6/23.  It was decided long ago when Lily was a baby that we wouldn't throw a party every single birthday because that would just be too crazy.  We don't mind having a friend over to spend the night/festivities with us once the kids get older, but other than that the kids will only get a party on their 6th, 12th, 16th and 18th, with the 8th birthday being special because they get the opportunity to be baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
 Lily turned 6 this year so it was my first birthday party!  Lily wanted a castle cake and so I did the best that I could.  It took me FOREVER to make this cake and though it's a little lopsided Lily was IN LOVE with it!  It was totally worth the hours to see her reaction.  I believe it was a lemon cake layered with strawberries and cream in between.

 Anyway, When her friends first arrived we decorated crowns and wands.  The girls had a fabulous time doing it and got quite creative.

 Next we had some nail polish fun along with some face painting.  Thank you to Mama Hsu for painting all the nails!  She did a GREAT job.  I had a lot of fun face painting too.  The idea came because Luke and I had just taken the kids to the NW Folk Life Festival roughly a month before and saw that people charged $5-$25 dollars for face painting.  When I saw what they were doing I thought to myself, "heck, I can totally do that!"

 After the face painting we went out to hit the pinata.  It was a somewhat rainy day so we did it by our carport.  I was pretty grateful for a nice carport that day. :)

 After that was present time!  Lily LOVED all her presents from her friends and overall had a grand time.  I was completely exhausted afterwards, but I think with a bit of help from my Hubby, Mama Hsu and our dear sister Chris, we were able to pull off a very successful party.  My little princess sure enjoyed it. :)

Gymnastics Show

After having Lily in ballet last school year, we decided to try something new.  I've always wished that I was better at gymnastics and Luke has always thought gymnastics was better than dance (personal opinions here people); so we decided to enroll them at the Eastside Gymnastics Academy.  I chose the place based on location and the fact that we knew one of the coaches back from our Institute days - Jeff Crockett!  The girls absolutely LOVED it.  At the end of the school year they put on a "Gymnastics Show" where parents can go down and go through each of the stations and take pictures of their children.  So here's a bit of what they have been up to and learning this year.  I thought it was really cool that each kid got either a medallion or a little trophy at the end.  We'll definitely be starting gymnastics again this Fall. :) 

Mother's Day and Father's Day

 I know, I am so behind, but at least I'm still posting these.  Apparently in the Bailey family instead of Easter Dresses, the girls in the family use to get Mother's Day dresses.  This year Mom Bailey and Angel decided to  continue with that tradition and they made matching skirts for the younger girls in the family and the granddaughters.  They mailed the skirts to us for both my family and Marren's family.  When Marren and I saw how adorable these were we had to go and find appropriate shirts to match.  So we went off to the consignment shop and the Value Village near our home.  I was so happy that I was able to find the girls matching tops that matched their skirts at the stores!  Talk about lucky!.
 Anyway, my Mother's Day was fantastic.  I did end up going to church by myself with the kids since Luke wasn't feeling well, but he made me breakfast in the morning, got the kids ready except for the hair part, and then when he was at home he cleaned up my house! :)  Every year at Mother's Day Luke always gives me a "day off" and I LOVE IT!  He always takes care of all the children, in fact, they're not even allowed to ask me for ANYTHING that day and he always cleans my house.  Talk about the best Mother's Day present in the world!  Him and Jeff just pampered Marren and I all day with lunch and dinner, putting the kids down, etc.  It was wonderful.

 Lily made me this drawing at school for Mother's Day.  I thought she did a fabulous job.  She told me that that day she didn't get to do "choice time" because she was working on this project for me.  I told her that it was the best picture I've seen her paint/draw.  I LOVED it.
 Anyway, for Father's Day I didn't do anything nearly as grand for Luke.  I tried, but I just am not as good I guess.  I ended up sending him to church with the girls by himself because Michael wasn't feeling well.  I did end up cleaning up just a tad, but it's different when you have a sick baby who constantly needs your attention.  I made him lunch and dinner, but you know, I realized that that wasn't really all that special since I do it everyday....  We did end up getting him a really nice wet suit for Father's Day so I guess at least we gave him a present.  I so appreciate how wonderful he is and what a great dad he his.  The art project below was something that Lily made in school for Luke.  It came with a story about how a father would go all the way up into the heavens to get the moon for his daughter.

Injuries

 A couple months ago Michael got his first... noticeable injury.  We were sitting at church and he decided to take a head dive right into the Hymn book holders in the pews.  It went straight across his nose and it wasn't pretty.  Luke took him out of sacrament meeting immediately and then went for ice in the kitchen.  However, there were no ice or ice packs in the kitchen at the church so he drove home and iced it there.  I stayed in the chapel with the girls and was told the he was really brave and pretty much stopped crying shortly after Luke took him out.  We loved how the finger bandage fit perfectly over his wound.  He looked pretty awesome.  Luke had to bring him back to church looking like that because Luke was performing a musical number that day for the end of Sunday School.  So I pretty much got to be embarrassed about being a terrible mom all day.  Fortunately most people understood and shared their pew accident stories with me to make me feel better.

 At the beginning of May, Luke's sister - Marren and her family came and visited us.  We love them and they have 3 kids all roughly the same ages as mine.  They came and stayed for 3 weeks and it was a blast.  Unfortunately, on the 3rd day that they were here, Lily sprained her ankle on the trampoline.  It was amazing to me how fast she healed considering how bad the sprain was.  I remember spraining my ankle in HS while playing Volleyball and I was on crutches and out for weeks!  Lily on the other hand didn't have crutches or a boot and was walking on her ankle after about 5 days.  Here's a picture of her REALLY awesome bruises from the sprain.  Isn't it amazing?!

Family Vacation Day 3

 On our last day (Sunday), we decided to go to the Forks Ward in the morning to attend church.  It was a very small ward but really nice people.  The funny thing was, after Sacrament meeting the Stake Music person for that Stake came up to Luke and asked if he'd be willing to perform a musical number next week. Luke informed her that we don't live in Forks and thanked her for the opportunity.  :)
 After church we went back to our place, packed up and headed out.  Our first destination was Beaver Falls.  I had read about it online and thought it might be cool. Unfortunately, Beaver Falls is on the side of the road and really no hiking trails at all.  So, the kids and I viewed it from the top while Luke did his thing and scaled down the side of the road and got the picture above.  It was pretty.

 We then headed to Salt Creek County Park, a place we visited a few years back on the Hsu vacation.  Unfortunately the tide was coming in and we didn't get to go out too far to explore the tide pools, but we still had a lot of fun.  We also discovered on this trip that the kids have never rolled down a hill before so we showed them how at the park.

We took off from Salt Creek County Park around 3pm to head home.  The kids were all exhausted but they sure had fun.  After we came home the next day for Family Home Evening we looked at all the pictures.  The kids then asked if we could go on family vacation again soon.  I think that's what we call a VERY successful family vacation. :)

Family Vacation Day 2

 The nice thing about having a place that has a full Kitchen is that you save a bunch of money on food.  The kids got up fairly early in the morning but that was ok because I had breakfast planned and ready to go.  We had a breakfast casserole and sticky buns in the morning that I was able to prepare the night before.  I didn't plan too much for us on Saturday because this is a vacation, and I didn't want to tire us all out that we'd need a vacation from vacationing afterwards. :)
 On the docket for Saturday was the Hoh Rain Forest, and that's it!  So, after breakfast I packed our lunches and then headed out.  Forks is really a GREAT location to stay at if you want to hit La Push and the Rain Forest.  It's only a 30-40 min drive to both destinations.  We did 2 hikes and ate lunch by the river on our second hike.  It was GORGEOUS and it smelled heavenly!  Nothing beats the fresh air of a rain forest!
 We were done by about 3pm and then headed back into town.  We hit a garage sale and got a box of whatever we wanted for $5 since it was the end of the day.  The girls got a giant bag of my little ponies, some books and we got Michael a bunch of little cars.  They were so excited.  We then hit the local grocery store, got some frozen pizzas and ice cream and ate dinner back at our rental.  The kids had a great time playing with all their new toys.  We showered them off that night and sent them all to bed by 8:30pm and Luke and I chilled out and watched a movie on TV.  Though I was pretty tired and crashed halfway through the movie. :)

 We had lunch by the river and the kids really enjoyed throwing rocks.

Spring Break Vacation Day 1

 A few weeks back Lily had her first ever Spring Break from school.  I wasn't sure how our Summer was going to shape up this year with various things - Idaho, Hsu Family Vacation, High Adventure, etc., so I decided that we would do our mini family vacation now.  The weather forecast was sketchy all week and I was nervous, but it ended up being perfect!
 For our vacation we decided to head out to the peninsula and visit La Push and the Hoh Rain Forest. We got up and left the house Friday morning at 6:15am.  There's a restaurant out in Sequim we found 2 years ago called Oak Table Cafe that serves the BEST breakfast.  Luke really wanted to eat there so we got up early just for that.  :)  It really is a fabulous place albeit a bit pricey.
We arrived in Sequim at 8:30am and had our breakfast.  Then we headed off to La Push.  La Push was absolutely GORGEOUS!  We were extremely lucky that it was sunny though it was still a bit cold.  We went to First Beach and played in the sand.  They had REAL sand which is very difficult to find in Washington.  We stayed out there for a good 3-4 hours, had lunch and just enjoyed the ocean.  There was a giant log washed up on the side of the beach and the roots were amazing!  We played around on the tree and the kids had a fabulous time
 We went up to Second Beach next.  You have to hike down to Second Beach and it's roughly 1 mile I think.  By the time we got there it was a bit cloudy and cold but it was so amazing!  My pictures don't do it justice since it was dark and gray and late in the day.  There were rocks and "caves" at Second Beach for us to explore and play around in.  It was a bit tricky with Michael, but the girls did very well. We left La Push around 5:15-5:30pm and never made it to Third Beach.  Third Beach is a bit longer of a hike and it's just miles of sand from what I hear so we decided it was ok to skip it.
 We stayed at Forks at a place called the Olympic Suites Inn, which was basically renovated apartments.  We got a 2 bedroom apartment, full kitchen, bath, etc. for only $95/night. Talk about a GREAT deal!   Forks is only a 10-15 mile drive from both La Push and the Hoh Rain Forest so it was really quite the perfect location.  I have to admit, the whole area (La Push included) really tried to capitalize on "Twilight," and it brought me a  little bit joy making fun of things here and there.  :)  When we headed down to La Push there was a giant sign that said, "Treaty Line, No Vampires Allowed," followed by lodgings called "Jacob's Place" and "Wolf Den."  There was even a restaurant that said, "Bella's Bulletin Board."  In Forks there were lots of "Twilight" shops and tours there was even "Twilight Wood" for sale. :)
 Anyway, we went and got some Mexican food and then headed back to the apartment to call it a night.  I wanted the vacation to be fun and relaxing; NOT stressful.  The kids all went to bed by about 7:30-7:45 and we had a fairly early night too.
 

 The roots of the giant log at First beach.  Can you believe it?!

Second Beach