Sweet Naomi Joy & Our Fishy Friends

This last Friday, I took the kiddos to the last MOPS (Mother's of Preschoolers) meeting of the year. I got Miss Naomi dressed up in a pretty dress and then soon after arriving, she got it all dirty with a big poopie diaper. Ahh, oh well, I got some cute pictures of her anyway!

She is really starting to fill out now a bit, I have the feeling that she is right on track for her weight now! I am going to take her in on this coming Tuesday for a weight check though just to see for sure. She loves to babble and smile at us now and the other day I heard a little chuckle from her too! She is just desparate to talk to us and even talks to her little Pooh bear toy in her car seat as well.

Josiah's award for completing two activity books was to get this fish tank, and the larger of the two fish, Herman, was the first occupant of our 10-gallon tank. We recently acquired Wanda and this lovely cannon for Josiah completing two more activity books. Wanda and Herman are funny to watch together. They push each other around the tank and sometimes sleep together as pictured here. We really think Herman likes having a buddy! Josiah loves watching his fish and it is actually very calming to have the sound of running water in the kitchen during the day. Oh and fish are super easy to care for, one of the best kind of pets in my opinion!

Family Hike on Mt. Rainier

We told Josiah a few days earlier that this time we would be taking the WHOLE family to Mt. Rainier for a hike, and so this morning he packed his little backpack with his helicopters and airplanes to take up the mountain and got himself all dressed and ready to go even before being asked. You may not know this, but helicopters and airplanes ARE essential hiking tools....for a 4-year old. On the car ride up to the mountain, David loaded the mp3 player with Veggie Tales songs and we enjoyed singing along and laughing at the funny songs. I was pretty miserable in the morning due to allergies and was sort of zoned and out of it, but couldn't help but laugh and smile at the "Boyz in the Sink" song with the the lyric, "We got skills with grammar. Real good we think. We switch 'Z's' for 'S's.' We're the Boyz in the Sink!"

In the above shot, Caleb is showing how happy he was to be exploring and saying, "Ooooo." I wasn't able to go on the 1/2 mile hike with the crew because of my hip and because Naomi needed a feeding right when we got there. David said though that Caleb was just pleased as punch and was looking around saying, "Whoah" over and over again (especially at all the little waterfalls) and also whenever he saw a broken tree he would say, "Uh-oh," and when one of those standbys wasn't good enough, he would just squeal with delight! At the end of the hike, I met them in the parking lot and asked Caleb who was running toward me, "Did you have fun?" He stopped short and said with a big grin, "a hike!" David said he was gleefully saying, "Hiking, hiking," over and over too. Do you think we have a hiker here?

On the trail, they saw five deer and whenever they saw them the twins would wave and say, "Hi," to the deer. Last time Josiah and Daddy went on this trail (last Saturday), Josiah remembered some things he learned about stumps. David asked him if he wanted to sit on the stump and Josiah replied, "No there's ants that live in there." Josiah also dubbed a certain rock, "Slide Rock," due to it looking like a slide and proceeded to try and slide down the rock.

Here pictured is the crew (my parents included) at the "Old People's Bath" as Josiah calls it...otherwise known as the mineral springs where old people USED to come and bathe. In one of the videos David took, Caleb was leaning precariously over the edge of the pool trying to reach the water and nearly fell in and Daniel chose to touch the water in a more safe place where he could easily reach it. This is typical of our boys. Caleb tends to be our risk taker in new situations and Daniel is the more conservative, careful one.

Near the end of the trail they found the beaver tree that Josiah was a little scared of the last time, and as you can see here Caleb doesn't mind it at all. They tried to get Daniel to go near it, but his response was, "No risk!" Apparently, he has picked up on the fact that he is not a risk taker! Daniel also was really getting into reading the signs along the trail and towards the end would say, "What say?" as he pointed to them.

After the hike, we went to the visitor's center up at Paradise and I happened to notice this information about "Old Growth Heather" and decided to pose next to it for fun. When we were eating lunch downstairs (which is what we did first) Josiah was saying how he was "excited to see the different poops!" One of the displays had droppings of different animals that you could view (beneath plastic covers thankfully) and he was looking forward to showing them to the brothers. Miss Naomi took the honors for being the youngest "hiker" there I am sure, as I didn't see any other infant carseats around us at the visitor's center. I am sure we were a sight to all with all our little adventurers!

I wanted to share a shot of Josiah with his new hiking hat. It says "Mt. Rainier" on it and on the way home he was wearing it and asked me, "I'm glad you bought the Mountain Rainier hat. Do I look cute in it?" On the way home in the car, Daniel was looking at the snow banks and kept saying, "Noman? noman??" For those who don't translate Daniel-speak that is "snowman." We told him we wouldn't be making a "noman" this time! We ended up stopping in Elbe to get some ice cream that was served out of a train car. Their ONE scoop of ice cream was quite big, but delicious! The kids enjoyed walking around looking at the train cars also. It is actually an inn and you can stay in the various train cars!

Overall, we had a great time and it seemed my allergies weren't as acute on the mountain, but as soon as we were rolling into the Puyallup area again they started flaring up. It could be something in this area is really getting to me and/or the Benedryl I took just wore off and perhaps it would have been just as bad on the mountain without it. Who knows, but allergies are miserable and I wish they would go away! That aside, it was fun to take the whole family on our first big adventure together!

Mother's Day Fun

After Mommy got a much needed nap after church, we all headed to the park for some fun in the sun! This is Daniel trying to grab the camera from me.

He was also really loving the swings, as evidenced by his happy little tongue sticking out.

Caleb wasn't loving the swings as much...here he was wanting to get off and run around again.

Josiah wouldn't let me get very many shots of him and here he is pouting that he has to get off and let his little friend take a turn on the swing.

This is Josiah leading the way for his little friend Audrey, who he met at the park. She was running around behind him shouting, "Boy....little boy!!" He saw her sitting by her Dad and he walked over to ask her to play. She said, "Do you want to pick flowers?" Her Dad suggested that perhaps he might want to go play another game.

Caleb was enjoying climbing and I caught his gleeful expression here.

Daniel was mastering this climbing area and he was very intent on making it to the top each time and very proud of himself as well for doing it.

Miss Naomi was enjoying the sun and we discovered that when we run out of size one diapers, that brother's size 5's can be folded down to fit her when needed. Glad we didn't have the opposite problem as I am most confident that Daniel and Caleb would not be able to squeeze into size 1 diapers!

Josiah's First Hike with Daddy

David has always been really interested in hiking and has always tried to get me to enjoy it, but the ongoing joke when we were dating was, "I'm a walker, not a hiker." (For those of you who don't know, my maiden name was Walker). There are some pretty funny stories actually of our hikes that we tried together. A quick synopsis of one of them was that David told me that we were going on an "easy" hike and it turned out that the "easy" hike was full of steep switchbacks and was actually quite HARD for an inexperienced hiker like me. Every time I encounter an incline, I almost immediately start losing my breath (and yes I know...side note: I need to get in shape). Needless to say, at one point an older couple (probably in their late 50's) trucked by us and David made some comment about how "old people were passing us" now. Ummm...yeah, that was NOT a popular statement when I was already tired and frustrated. He THOUGHT that me reaching the top would help me feel some satisfaction, but my conclusion at the end was that I would have enjoyed the waterfall more had I been whisked up there on a chair instead. Oh well...the good news is....we have THREE BOYS and we hope that ONE of them will enjoy hiking more than me.

This picture above is Josiah in the snow. He was SO excited to play in the snow on the hike and he said to Daddy, "We should have brought some carrots, Daddy." The carrots were not for the deer they saw, but rather "for the snowman's nose." Needless to say, they didn't build a snowman this time.


It was a gorgeous day on Mt. Rainier and David took Josiah on a 1/2 mile hike that he was able to handle really well. He said even the twins could probably do this one and perhaps even I could do it too then I think!

Josiah is standing next to the mineral springs where "the old people come to take a bath," he told me later. He said to Daddy, "We have a bathtub at home."

Josiah is looking at the people climbing Mt. Rainier through the binoculars in the new vistor's center.

In this picture, Josiah is saying, "Sit here Daddy," and is patting the stump. After the shot, David sat down with him and he said, "Now what do you want to do?" Josiah replied, "Oh...well, we can talk about things."

The beavers had been knawing at this large tree and Josiah seems a little nervous here that the tree was going to fall on him. I just LOVE his expression here! Overall the hike was a real success and on the way home they stopped at the "tent store" and bought a lantern and a sleeping bag for Josiah for when David takes him camping. He is going to first start by "camping out" in the living room and then move to a tent in the backyard, and then finally to a campsite.