Easter dress success!

Whew! I finished Kiera's Easter dress just in time. I was able to finish it this afternoon while the kids were playing and watching the Lion King movie. It turned out very nice. I used the same pattern as the Christmas dress I made last year and just made the skirt a tad bit longer. Kiera loves it and says that "it is bootiful!" My favorite part of the dress is the little bows I made for the sleeves. I wanted to make it look somewhat different from her other one. These pictures aren't the best of quality, but I hope to get some Easter pictures taken of all of us tomorrow.
Maybe the next time I take up a sewing project I will make a tutorial of it. But I think dress making is a little too extensive for my first tutorial attempt.

Zipline through the trees

I know you all have been anticipating the video of our ziplining adventure while we were in Victoria, BC. Well I finally got around to it and uploaded it. We had so much fun up there! This was probably the highlight of our entire trip. We went down 8 different ziplines, crossed two suspension bridges, and took a 10 minute ATV ride. If any of you ever have a chance to visit Victoria I highly recommend doing this!

CLICK HERE TO WATCH!

Ok...fine...if you insist

A wonderful friend of mine tagged me in one of her blog postings.

Here are the rules:

Take a picture of yourself right now.

No primping or preparing.

Just snap a picture.

Load the picture onto your blog.

Tag some people to play.

Yes I know it was a little tough for me. No make-up, no shower today (so far), so it is just plain me. But the title of the game is the Babe Tag. So what is there to loose?

The people I am going to tag for this are:
Beverly Tank
Laura Owen
Michelle Glenn
LaDean Glenn
Nicole Martinsen

Have fun ladies! You are all babes in my book!

Conference Weekend

OOOHHHH YES! The sun is here! I am so happy the sun has been with us for 3 days in a row now! Conference weekend was absolutely gorgeous. We spent lots of time outside. During sessions on Saturday the kids and I pulled some weeds in the backyard and played. Then Kiera helped daddy wash the cars! She loves helping daddy and it has become a tradition for those two to wash cars together. Then after the last session on Saturday we went out house hunting with our realtor. We are looking to buy a house soon. We found one that we might make an offer on just to see how low they'll go on it. There are a lot of changes we would want to make on it for us to be satisfied so we'll see how that goes. These are a couple pictures I took of the kids playing outside. Aren't they adorable! I love the hats. I wish I could pull one off as good as these two do.



Then on Sunday after conference we all went for a really long walk. The weather was perfect! We wore t-shirts and sandals and I even got hot! It was great! We were gone for about an hour and a half. I don't know how many miles we walked, but it sure was a long one. Then we drove around in Arlington just driving by houses we saw for sale. The kids were beat by the time we got back.

Trip to Victoria, BC

For my birthday Dan and I took a trip to Victoria, BC. My mom came up from Boise with my little sister and they stayed and watched the kids for us. It was very nice to have some alone time together and have a chance to relax. This is a picture of Dan and I on our ferry boat ride up to Victoria. It was a lot like riding a city bus except your seat were in sets of 3 and you faced the other passengers with a table in between. So it was a lot like sitting at a booth in a restaurant, except you got your own individual chair. It took us about 3 hours to get there and we met some interesting people along the way.

This is my first ever customs paper! This was my first time out of the country and hopefully not the last.
Our hotel was great! We stayed at the Inn at Laurel Point which was about a 2 minute walk from the ferry docks. We were able to check in early since we upgraded to a better room that was all ready to go; So we didn't have to lug our bags around with us at all, which was nice. The room was very nice and my favorite part was the bathroom. It was floor to ceiling marble tile with a large soaker tub and more bottles of soap, lotions, and creams than I have ever seen in a hotel room at one time. There were even bath salts and an exfoliating mitt. Another great plus was the bathrobes. They were absolutely heavenly! So so so soft! I wished I could have brought one of those babies home with me. In the end we didn't even have to pay for the upgrade! When we went to check out of the hotel at the end of our stay we noticed they hadn't charged us for the upgrade so we mentioned it to them. In the end they ended up giving it to us for FREE! I guess it pays to be honest "EH"
We had a king sized bed and get this! We were able to sleep snore free! Maybe all Dan needs is a new pillow. It was very comfy.

Our room had a nice balcony and view of the harbor and of the hotel's Japanese gardens. It was great!
We saw lots of sea planes while we were there too. They were constantly coming into the harbor.
There were a bunch of these little trolly boats that took people from one side of the harbor to the other so they didn't have to walk all that way. Aren't they the cutest little things!
We thought it was pretty funny going out to eat at McDonalds. They had what was called a "double big mac." How crazy is that! They didn't taste anything like our regular big macs either. Believe me, we tried one just so we could say we did it.


The highlight of our trip was probably our trip to Adrena Line Ziplines. It was sooo fun! They took us for a 10 minute ATV ride up to the top and we ziplined our way back down on 8 different lines and 2 suspension bridges. It was snowing while we were up there in the tops of the trees so it was pretty cold, but fun none the less. I took a short video of myself going down one of the lines. I hope to get that posted as well.




We also made our way to the famous Buchart Gardens. They were beautiful! We were still there in the off season so not everything was in bloom yet but it was still very pretty. If we ever go again we'll have to plan it for 2 to 3 months later in the year so we can see the rose gardens in bloom.
While we were there it rained a bit but the park had umbrellas everywhere for their visitors. They made for nice photo props too I thought.
On our last day in Victoria we went to the Royal BC museum. It was pretty fascinating. We learned a lot and the exibits were sooo well done! They put the tiniest details into the displays that they didn't look fake or staged at all. Check out the fish market picture below and you'll see what I mean.

After the museum we had planned on taking a walk to another nice park in downtown Victoria but we ran out of time before we had to make our ferry so we took pictures in front of the museum instead. We had our tripod along and I wanted to get some cute couple shots. I think they turned out pretty nice.

Then we headed back to Seattle. The weather was beautiful! I got some shots of the water from the deck of the ferry and a shot or two of some nearby sail boats.
We had lots of fun and hope to do something like this again in the future. When we arrived back in Seattle we got stuck in line for awhile. We soon learned the reason was because someone was arrested and escorted in handcuffs. We watched as they escorted her out. It was interesting and we wish we knew the whole story of why.
Thanks mom and Kayla for staying with the kids! I know they had a lot of fun with you and I am sure you had fun spoiling them as well.

A Full Heart

I have been thinking a lot lately. I am not very good with words but I will try to say what I feel. Have you ever had so many feelings inside that you wish you could tell them to everyone and they'd know exactly what you meant because when you told them they could feel it too? Well that is what I have felt like recently. I feel like I could burst!

I am soooo blessed in my life. I see others around me who don't have what I do and wish I could hand it over. But the one thing I am most thankful for in my life is my testimony of the true gospel of Jesus Christ. I am grateful of the knowledge that I have of him and his plan for us. I often wonder what my life would be like and where I'd be without knowing that I will one day be with him again. I know that one day I will too see other members of my family that have passed on. Life would be so sad and uncertain if I didn't believe that. I know everything in life has a purpose. Have you ever wondered what might have happened differently if you made a different choice than what you actually did at one point in time? I know I have. But I also know that what has happened, and what is to come, is more exciting and wonderful than I can even know now. I know my Heavenly Father loves me, and that he has a plan for me. I know that his Son Jesus Christ came to this earth and that he suffered and died for me. To know that someone was willing to do that for me is humbling and touches me deeply. It makes me want to do my best in this life to make that sacrifice worth the effort. I know the scriptures to be true and they are a blessing in my life. I love my family and look forward to spending all eternity with them. I have so much in my heart that I wish I could write.

Where's your smile?

I have the nursery manual that has all the lessons in it that they already do in Nursery but we use it for our FHE lessons since it focuses more on Kiera's age and comprehension level.
This Monday we did the lesson on being happy. We talked about how when we see people smile it makes us happy and when others see us smile we can make them happy. We sang "if you chance to meet a frown..." and "if you're happy and you know it.." Then it was time to pray. Kiera wasn't cooperating and was whining and pouting so I reminded her what our lesson was on.
I asked her where her smile was. She still pouted...then I asked her if it was in her pocket. Still no answer....I said Kiera where is your smile (trying to get her to smile) She said, "in my teeth" That was pretty funny. Then I said, "let me see it. Where is your smile? Can you find it?" She said, "no it's in my pocket" It was soo cute that Dan and I started laughing. I then went up to her and reached in her pocket, pulled her smile out and placed it on her mouth, and TA DA she was smiling from ear to ear! " I found my smile!", she exclaimed. We were then able to say the closing prayer and everyone was happy.
Ever since then she tells us "I found my smile!" And shows us her smile and we tell her that it makes us sooo happy. I think it was a success. What do you think?