Withdrawal

We are trying to wean Lincoln off of his pacifier. Right now, he only gets it at night when he goes to sleep, but we are trying to get rid of it there as well. Last night, he fell asleep while we were "looking for" his ya-ya (his name for it), so we thought maybe we could make some progress... however, when I went to investigate some whimpering about three hours later I found him tossing and turning and crying in his sleep "I can't find it... I can't find my... I can't find it... I can't find my ya-ya". It really was the saddest thing I've ever heard - who would've thought you could go through withdrawal over a pacifier!

Welcome Home

We finally got home to our house yesterday afternoon, only to be greeted by the stench of rotting meat. It seems something went wrong with the seal on our freezer fairly early after we left and all of the food had two nice hot weeks to get very ripe. I'm sure there are easier ways to clean out your freezer, but none quite so effective. We are now waiting for a technician to come tell us if the refrigerator is salvageable. It still seems to work fine, but we don't know whether the seepage got into the insulation or not. The smell is enough to make anyone turn vegetarian and got me to buy coffee for the first time in my life. The coffee grounds seem to have done their job though, as this morning we couldn't really smell the rotting meat but, as Leah puts it, the house smells weird - since coffee isn't a smell that has ever been in our house.

4th of July

I think we're all ready to get back to our house, but we HAD to stay for the pancake breakfast and bike parade that my parents' ward was holding to celebrate the 4th of July. We all had a lot of fun and the kids loved decorating their bikes and riding them around, even if the ones we keep at grandparents house are a tad too small for them.

The best part was having Uncle Sam (yes, the kids do have an Uncle Sam) come for a visit. They got to play with him all day and later in the evening we drove him down to Grandpa Jeff's in Galveston. We wanted to go play on the beach for a bit, but we forgot to account for the holiday crowd and decided to go play at the house instead. However, here are some pictures from our visit on Father's Day weekend - imagine, if you will...

Back at the Ranch

Leah and Lincoln spent the week with their grandparents and they said they missed us, but they sure had a lot of fun as well. You can see from these pictures that they were especially good at helping to keep the house and yard clean :)
But they also got to play at the Children's Museum, the splash park, the library and of course, Chick-Fil-A. Next time I'm staying with Grandma and they can go on vacation!

Cousins

On our way home from Canada, we made a pitstop to visit Andrew's brother who lives in the Seattle area. Leah and Lincoln would have had a grand time playing with their cousins if they had been able to come, so we played in their stead. We took a field trip down to Point Defiance and had fun playing with the kids on the playground,

teaching them how to skip rocks in Puget Sound,

and hiking through the beautiful trees.

Sorry we didn't get to go to the zoo Elise... next time for sure - and we'll bring the cousins with us for that!