For our family vacation this year, we decided to finally take a trip to Seattle that we had been envisioning for several years.  We spent an awesome week in Seattle and were able to do all the items that we had planned.

After landing our first stop was to visit Jimmy Hendrix’s grave.  We had several graves we wanted to visit and rub during the vacation and Jimmy Hendrix happened to be on the way home from the airport.  Later in the week, we visited Bruce Lee and found a young man and his mother there visiting the grave.  The young man was obviously a huge fan and we were able to share our supplies with him and give him a copy of the grave rubbing.

This was our first pic of the vacation and it was the beginning and end of my vision of doing a bunch of jumping shots during the vacation at different sites.  At least Ryan looks awesome–it’s like a pinterest fail shot.

During our trip to San Francisco we discovered the CityPass.  It is a discount pass that gets you access to several different city sights and we purchased it again in Seattle.  Our first stop on the pass  was the EMP museum which was a perfect start to Seattle and the music scene there.  The museum is in the Seattle Center which had several outdoor spaces, some fun street performers and also the Chihuly Garden and Glass.  I don’t think we would have gone to Chihuly Garden and Glass alone but it was inlcuded in the City Pass so we stopped in to visit.  It was one of my favorite stops on the trip.  It has all glass exhibits Dale Chuhily and it was so beautiful.  The exhibit below is a massive installation of flowers hanging from the ceiling.

We spent a lot of time outside during the trip.  We visited several different parks around Seattle and  a couple of beaches.  The water was cold and the beaches were typically rocky but I love the beach anytime we can get near it.  We had pretty nice weather during the trip–it was August and in the 70s most days.

One of our favorite parks that we visited the Gas Works park that is a downtown park built around an old industrial plant.   

One of the highlights of our trip was a tour of the Seattle Underground.  The tour visits a now underground level of the city that was created after a city-wide fire in 1889.  We of course visited the Seattle Public Market and ate some great chowder and visited all the little shops.

We took two short trips outside of the city on days where we needed a little something different to do visiting a waterfall one day and a Japanese garden and Bonsai exhibit on another day.  We also did a ferry ride out to Bremerton Island and visited the USS Turner Joy a retired destroyer.

Two of the activities included in the City Pass were a boat tour of the city and tickets to travel to the top of the Space Needle.  There was a lot of nervous kid energy about traveling to the top of the Space Needle but once we got up there everyone relaxed and had fun looking at city.  We visited near the end of the trip and it was really fun to see many of the places that we had visited during the week.

We couldn’t leave without visiting the famous Gum Wall.  It is really a Gum Alley where people stick chewed gum all of the walls.  Kind of cool, kind of disgusting.  But we boughts a four dollar pack of gum and joined in.

Highlights of the trip:

Nathan–Seeing the city and visiting the museums
Eric–EMP museum and the Public Market
Lauren–Being around the water, the underground and the market
Ryan–Boat tour of Seattle and parks
Danielle–the Space Needle and the EMP museum
Rick–Underground Tour
Beth–Underground Tour and parks

Rick is the Young Men’s president and was asked to get pictures of each of the young men. They decided to do funny pictures and since our kids were home they joined in. Of course, Rick purchased several items at DI as props.

Eric–Camo Sleeper (DI)

Rick

Danielle

Lauren

Ryan

Nathan (Everything DI)

And then one extra of Eric with some of the glasses that were purchased at DI and an 80s hair parting.  He’s ready to be cast as “the nerd” in an 80s movie.  This picture makes me laugh out loud everytime I see it.

Eric had a good friend named Austin who has been in his scout troop since we moved to Utah.   Eric planned an eagle scout project to help Austin pass the sacrament at church.  Austin was in a wheelchair and could not move his own body and Eric envisioned a special tray for Austin’s chair.

Austin passed away last summer just around the time Eric was ready to start formalizing his project.  So he visited Austin’s school to see if there was another project he could do to honor Austin. 

He met with Austin’s teachers who explained that most of the students in Austin’s class wear bibs each day at school.  Most of the bibs that the school has are made out of baby fabrics and the teachers wished they had bibs that teenagers would like.  So Eric gathered volunteers willing to sew bibs, organized preparation of bib sewing kits and then finally delivered the completed bibs to the school.  

Here are the students wearing some of the bibs that Eric helped create.  In February, Eric was awarded his eagle scout.  He wanted a small ceremony.  

Grandpa Craig spoke and gave the eagle charge to Eric.

Eric and Nathan with their scout leader, Brother Droge.  Eric gave Brother Droge the Mentor pin for helping him on his Eagle journey.

I’m proud of Eric for working hard to get his Eagle Scout award.  I’m proud of him for being a good friend to Austin and for thinking of a way to honor Austin.  Way to go, Eric.

Once there was a dad who spent hours creating pinewood derby cars for his sons.  His first two sons had both enjoyed the spotlight using these amazing cars to easily win first place in the competitive sport of pinewood derby.  The father had one last son.  The last son had competed twice before but never won first place.  After many hours of preparation, the father and son attended the final pinewood derby competition.

The last son had full faith in his father and knew that victory was his.

People came from all across the land to see the great pinewood derby competition of 2015.

Many boys and many fathers had spent hours preparing cars that they were sure would take them to victory.  After many minutes of racing, the announcer finally stood to declare the winner.  He told the boys and anxious fathers that the winner had won by hundredths of a second.

The winner was announced and the last son was thrilled to hear his name announced.  He ran to the front of the room to receive his prize.  

The son was so joyful he did not see the joy in his fathers face.  His work was done and all of his sons had received the honors he hoped for them to achieve.  “All’s well that ends well”, said the father.  “Anyone want to buy a bunch of tools?”

It amazes me that with all our blessings, comforts of life, good health and safe living–that sometimes we forget how really good life is.  These pictures remind me of how great life is.  This is Christmas Eve and the kids had just put on their matching Christmas jammies (Rick asked me this year how long I was planning on getting matching jammies and I said “Forever.  I can already envision all the kids, their spouses and grandkids all wearing matching pajamas”).  I can’t remember what started the laughter but the kids got the giggles and couldn’t stop laughing.

In an effort to get one good picture, I had them all stand up–look at how these kids have grown in the last couple years. Especially the older boys.

Christmas Jammies 2010

Then they started with individual pictures.  Ryan can make us all roll with laughter–he struck a classic Ryan as a model pose with the tree.

After the kids went to bed, I came down and took a picture of the tree–I love the tree at night and how peaceful this picture makes me feel.

Christmas morning was wonderful as usual.

Danielle in Frozen heaven.

Grandpa and Grandma OReilly Eric “hiding” some treats that Grandma gave us

Life is very good. I’m especially grateful for Jesus Christ and the knowledge that because of His life–even when things are really hard and health is bad, money is very tight and peace is hard to find– life can still be good because of Him.

I think that one of my greatest parenting accomplishments will be the potty-training of five humans.  Potty-training does not make the short list because of the amazing skills that I possess as a parent but because of the patience and self-control that it required from me.  (I won’t give any potty training advice except “Decide from the beginning that you are going to get your carpets steam cleaned so you don’t have to freak out every time someone has an accident” and “Be easy on yourself and them”).

I feel like science fairs require the same patience and self-control.  Anytime a child is assigned a 6-8 week long project that has to culminate in a lab journal, written report and tri-fold poster–a parenting challenge has been issued.  I have learned that there are two factors that can improve the process immensely.  Keep the project simple and the experiment time period short.  No growing plants under lights for 6 weeks.  No human experiments that require 22 people to participate.  The project should be done start to finish is a long weekend.

This years project was a great one–the effects of acid on eggshells.  I had seen a project several years ago where someone removed an eggshell with vinegar.  Lauren researched different acidic liquids found at home and then did an experiment to see which liquids would  remove the eggshells most quickly.  

Here are the eggs at the end of four days.  The vinegar completely removed the shells (last two eggs on right) leaving the eggs in the membrane sac. When the shells are removed, the eggs absorb the liquid so the apple cider vinegar egg was brown.
Here is the white vinegar egg with light shining on it.

Lauren had hypothesized about which liquid would remove the shell most quickly and had a different outcome than expected.  A bonus in my book.  I think teachers love it when they have a different outcome than expected–so I’m always happy when that happens.

Lauren worked hard and it was a pretty painless project  It was done start to finish in five days (check) and everything we needed was already in our kitchen (check).  Another year survived.  I’m also open for good ideas by the way–we still have several more science fairs ahead of us.

The last two years we have added a new tradition to the Christmas treats line-up.  We use a microwave caramel corn recipe and then drizzle chocolate over it.  I buy one of the bags of red and green chocolate chips and have the kids separate the colors and then melt it in the microwave. We added vanilla chips for white this year and it turned out so cute.

Part of what I love about it is that you can make tons of it really quickly and it looks cute in cellophane bags for treats (if you can keep from eating it all in one afternoon).  Here’s the recipe:

4 quarts popped popcorn
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup margarine (I use butter-in everything-always)
1/4 cup light corn syrup
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1. In a 2 quart casserole dish, or other heat-proof glass dish, combine the brown sugar, margarine, corn syrup, salt and vanilla. Heat for 3 minutes in the microwave, then take out and stir until well blended. Return to the microwave, and cook for 1 1/2 minutes. Remove from microwave, and stir in the baking soda.
2. Pour syrup over the popcorn (I do this in a big bowl).  Spray the inside of a large brown paper sack (a paper grocery bag is perfect size) with non-stick cooking spray.  Transfer popcorn to bag. Roll down the top once or twice to close the bag, and shake to coat the corn. Place bag into the microwave, and cook for 1 minute and 10 seconds. Remove, shake, flip the bag over, and return it to the microwave. Cook for another 1 minute and 10 seconds. Dump the popcorn out onto waxed paper, and let cool until coating is set. Store in an airtight container.

Once it is spread out on the waxed paper, we melt chocolate chips in the microwave and then transfer the melted chocolate into baggies.  Snip off the corner of the bag and then drizzle it all over the popcorn.  Don’t worry about how it looks.  Move the popcorn out onto the back porch to cool down fast and then enjoy.

One warning (besides that this is highly addictive) – the caramel is hot, sticky, burning lava–watch out when you are pouring it onto the corn and transferring it into the bag.

For this years annual gingerbread house party, we invited two families from our neighborhood and both families really got into their houses and made very impressive homes.  I think that instead of our gingerbread house getting better and better each year–instead they get a little crazier and crazier.

This year’s yard was a homage to Bill Murray films–I’m not sure at all how that started.  My favorite yard feature can be seen to right of the house. A classic scene from Ghostbusters: the Stay-Puft marshmallow man is there and you can see the Ghostbusters in front of him with the streams from their proton packs reaching up to him.  Not everything referred to Bill — I am pretty sure the volcano has nothing to do with Bill.

Our friends on the other hand took their work very seriously and planned homes that could be found in a Better Homes and Gardens magazine. Look at the pretzel porch that was constructed above.

This Log Cabin above was the other masterpiece.  I have to remember those trees because they are really simple but very cute.

This is Ryan’s third year wrestling.  Ryan is wrestling now with Summit Academy and the coach there is really doing a great job creating a junior wrestling program.  They practiced for several weeks doing conditioning and strength training before the actual wrestling started.  AND this year, they got uniforms.  

Even after a couple of years watching Ryan wrestling–it is still so hard for me to watch him wrestle.  The matches are intense and it is hard not to get emotionally involved (especially when Ryan is wrestling someone with a hard style (for example, some kids slap and it is hard to watch your kid get slapped and not be able to stop it))

But it is fun when you are on top

This fall Nathan was in Pride and Prejudice.  He played Mr. Collins.  Here is a character description I found online: “there is no one quite like Mr. Collins […] his name has become a byword for a silliness all of his own- a felicitous blend of complacent self-approval and ceremonious servility.”

Nathan did a great job–he played the character in a perfectly creepy and conceited way and added his twist that made the character really stand out. He spent a lot of time thinking about Mr. Collins’ voice and mannerisms and habits and had a great time playing the character.   

I love watching Nate on stage.  He gets better and better every play and clearly loves acting and it’s a joy to watch your children love something.

Acting is magical.  Change your look and your attitude, and you can be anyone. – Alicia Witt.   Even a creepy conceited man.