Issaquah Salmon Hatchery {September 21}

We visited the Issaquah Salmon Hatchery a few weeks ago – it’s not too far from our house, and it was so fun to see the fish! Every fall, the salmon return from their years at sea to spawn in Issaquah creek. They are HUGE! So impressive to see them all lined up making their way upstream, and trying to jump. Here are a few pictures of our fish friends:

      

can you see all their tails sticking out of the water?

After the salmon hatchery, we headed to our friends’ house to watch the (very disappointing) BYU vs. Utah football game – hence the matching BYU shirts.

Ryan @ 2.5

Ryan was a little more willing subject when I was taking the boys’ pictures. I love all the little expressions we captured – so much of his little personality. I don’t have a spotlight questionnaire for him, but he is at a pretty fun / funny age right now. A couple of my favorite words he says right now are “actually” and “probably”. He likes to pretend alligators are coming, speeds around on his glider bike (he likes to put his feet up on the pegs), likes to color and play with cars and blocks. According to him, his favorite food is chicken nuggets, his favorite drink is milk, he doesn’t know his favorite color, his favorite movie is “Cosmo” (I didn’t know that was a movie…), and he wants to be a monkey when he grows up (I think he has growing up confused with Halloween…). We love this funny little guy! (and sorry for the picture overload, I had a hard time choosing my favorites)

Bennett @ 4.5

I meant to take some posed/formal pictures of the boys around their birthdays in February and April…and it finally happened in September. I’m that on top of things. I took them to Lithia Park when we were at my parents’ house and got some cute ones of each of them.

In primary, they spotlight one of the kids each week and it was Bennett’s turn a couple weeks ago. I had filled out the questions a while earlier, so I don’t think Bennett remembered his answers. I could tell most parents filled at least part of it out for their kids, but these were purely Bennett’s answers – I thought they were pretty funny! So here’s a little bit about Bennett, in his own words (although he now claims some of the answers are different):

• My favorite food is: chicken nuggets

• My favorite color is:  almost all of them except brown & black

• My favorite thing to do is: have my friends over and play frisbee

• My favorite prophet is: Nephi because he built a boat

• Where would I love to visit?: Grandma's house with cows and Grandma’s house with Zoe

• What talents do I have?: some games, somersaults

• What do I want to be when I grow up?: a guy that puts the books back where they go when people send them to the library

• My favorite number is: 300 and 1000

• My favorite drink is: apple juice

• My favorite thing to do at school: color

• What's your favorite movie: Mickey Mouse

• What word best describes me? a boy

 

Brothers

Bennett and Ryan have seemed to be especially good friends lately. I love seeing them play together and take care of each other. On Bennett’s first day of preschool, the teacher went around the circle and asked each of the kids what they like (food, to do, toys, etc.). Several kids had gone and said certain toys that they liked, and when she got to Bennett, he said “I like to play with my little brother”. I love that they are such good friends! Almost every day the past 3 months, they have gone outside at some point to ride their bikes and scooters, play catch, play basketball, or play golf in our driveway / on our lawn. A couple weeks ago they were out playing and went over and sat on the front porch – I asked what they were doing in this pics and Bennett said he was teaching Ryan about sizes – he had drawn lines of different sizes on the paper and was showing Ryan which was the biggest and smallest, etc. Love these little buddies!

 

Visit to Grandma & Grandpa’s House {Sept 16-19}

Since Bennett’s preschool wasn’t starting until the beginning of October, I decided to take the boys down to visit my parents in Ashland for a few days in mid-September. The drive was a little long by myself, but the boys were pretty good and we survived. We stopped at Jess & Shane’s in Portland for lunch and a little break before going the rest of the way.

Bennett and Ryan had a great time with their grandma and grandpa. They went to preschool a couple days with my mom, (while I enjoyed a trip to the Tuesday market with dad, some solo shopping, and a wonderful massage as a bday present from my mom). The boys also took a trip to Scienceworks with grandpa, and came with us apple picking twice (our friends had a short little tree with tons of apples on it – the perfect size for them, then we went to an orchard and picked some bigger ones). They picked out fabric for some superhero capes that grandma made them, helped grandma plant some flowers, “helped” make applesauce, ate a picnic in Lithia Park, and mostly loved just spending time with grandma and grandpa and their fun toys. It was a great few days!!

Ryan and Bennett’s job was to take the apples from my mom and put them gently (we had to emphasize the gently part!) in the box

We stopped at Jess & Shane’s again on the way back – we stayed there Thursday night and hung out for a while before driving the rest of the way on Friday. It was a long drive, but not long enough to prevent me from being willing to do it again :)

the Zoo and the Park

The second week in September, the Woodland Park Zoo had a members’ appreciation night. I bought an annual membership for me & for Bennett (Ryan’s free – if we go 3 times in a year it’s already worth it) and we took advantage of member night to get Nate in free with us. They only had parts of the zoo open, so Ryan was disappointed he didn’t get to see the elephants, but we still had fun. The highlight was the lions – they were asleep when we first got there, but then the male lion woke up and roared really loudly several times – it was pretty cool.

We also spent a lot of time at the park trying to enjoy the weather before it became cold and rainy. the boys always think they’re pretty cool “surfing” on this teeter-totter-type toy.

Labor Day Weekend

For Labor Day weekend, we went down to Portland to visit my Jess & Shane and their family. We started out the weekend by heading to the coast on Saturday.  There was quite a bit of traffic on the drive, and the main spot in Cannon Beach was pretty busy, but we headed down a little farther to Hug Point.  It was busy there too, but not as bad.  It had been sunny the whole drive over, but as we pulled up to the beach, we couldn’t even see the water the fog was so dense. Fortunately, it burned off within an hour or so after we arrived.  The kids had a great time playing together.  I think they could have stayed there all day!

      

We ended the day with some delicious seafood at Mo’s before heading home.  On Monday, we headed down to the outlets to do some shopping. We enjoyed the rest of the day hanging out and having a picnic dinner before driving back that night. Thanks for such a fun weekend!