Davey's Beach House

Last weekend the girls and I went to Davey's beach house on Hood Canal. We spent the weekend with Davey, Paula and Quinn just hanging out wondering if the sun would ever come out. It never got very warm but the girls had fun any way looking for shells and sand dollars.

This is Davey's beach house. He uses the row boat to get out to his motor boat anchored out in the water.

Jordan hoping for a boat ride.

On Saturday we went to a community event that had local artists, food and fun things for the kids to make. The girls painted wooden snakes, decorated visors, had their faces painted, and made wooden boats.

Torrin lovin' on Davey with Quinn and Paula

Here is Jordan getting help with her wooden boat.

Here are the finished products.

Torrin couldn't wait to try out her boat. She found it worked better without the "flag".

Later we went for a boat ride.

After any exciting day of beach combing, boat building, and boat rides the girls watched movies on these tiny little DVD players.

The Bee (Hornet) Story

This weekend we went on a bee hunt, well hornet hunt. Kevin and I just had a discussion about whether it was a hornet or a wasp. Apparently a hornet is a type of wasp. So we were both right. Jordan and Torrin had spotted a gigantic paper wasp (hornet) nest hanging from the shop eves a few days ago when they were in the hot tub.

This is the nest.

First Kevin attacked the nest with a cheap can of wasp spray. Then he decided to really piss them off and squirted them with the pressure washer. It knocked down the paper outer structure and dislodged a couple layers of the honeycomb with lots of cells for new hornets.

Here is one of the layers still attached.

This is a close up of one of the layers that fell off. It had hornets in different stages of development. The empty cells in the center had been vacated by mature hornets. The white bubbles are cocoons with wiggly hornets in them. On the out edges are the hornet larvae that have not made cocoons yet. We extracted one of the cocoons with a wiggly hornet from a cell.

Close up of the cocoon with wiggly hornet.

We decided to set this hornet free so we cut open his cocoon. It was made of pretty tough stuff so it took some effort to open an end for the hornet to escape.

Here is the hornet crawling out of his cocoon.

After a difficult C-section, Kevin and I gave birth to a hornet. It stumbled around for a while then we lost interest and went in the house. I was planning on showing the girls the rest of the layer with cocoons but a wild animal stole the hornet hatchery during the night. And so ends the bee (hornet) story.

As a side note we did find two other nests but they were last years models and had long since been vacated.

Kevin's Graduation!

Today Kevin graduated from the University of Phoenix with a Bachelor of Science in Business Management. WooHoo! Kimberly and the girls went with me to watch as he walked in the commencement ceremony. Nathaniel was there watching both his dad and his cousin graduate. Congratulations Kevin! You put in a lot of very hard work to earn your degree while maintaining a full time job and golf habit. You are amazing!

Here are some shots from the day.

This is Torrin killing time while we waited for the ceremony to begin. (Self portrait)

Jordan took this picture of her beautiful mother.

Kevin anxiously waiting for his turn to walk.

A very happy graduate!

We found Nathaniel after the event.

Kevin with a couple of goof balls.

We had a beautiful sunny day.

Torrin's 5th Birthday Party

Saturday we celebrated Torrin's 5th birthday. Kevin, Kimberly and I took Jordan and Torrin to the Family Fun Center. The girls had a blast playing outside in the nice warm sun. Here are some pictures of the girls playing on the rides.

Jordan on the bumper boats. She got soaked!

Jordan and Torrin on the swing ride. Jordan discovered this ride is a little too young for her. Torrin still likes it.

We took the girls on the race cars. Torrin kept telling me to go faster!

Here is Kevin in his own car. Some kid passed him and said "You got crushed" as he flew by. I guess weight matters.

The girls were hilarious on the trampoline. They were trying so hard to do flips. They would get frog legs and lean their heads back but no flipping. They both finally were able to flip over.

This was about as far as they would get and then flop back down. Tory flipped over and landed on her head once.

Here is the lovely cake I made for Torrin. I made it with rolled fondant. It was not as easy as it looks on the cake show.

Happy Birthday Torrin!

Here is Torrin opening the present from Angelita and Ashley. It was a box with makeup and Hanna Montana tattoos. Torrin got so excited she ran outside and then came back in a few minutes later and said "I had to go outside to calm down!" It was very funny. I guess the cake put her into sugar over load.

Kevin and I gave her a 3 story Barbie condo with an elevator. Kevin spent the next hour putting it together.

While Kevin worked on the condo Kim, Ashley and I worked on sewing the build-a-bear animals. That was way more work than we wanted to do.

Here is Torrin's build-a-bear.

Here is the finished Condo.

4 Mile Marathon

Yes that's right. 4 miles. A couple of weeks ago, I know I am slow to post, I walked with my bothers and sisters in a grueling 4 mile marathon. We braved the freezing 35F temperatures and horrible hang-overs to participate in the MS walk-a-thone in the Tri Cities. The weekend started with a road trip from western Washington with me at the wheel, Maggi buried in her IPhone and Davey grinding through a crossword puzzle. Poor Susan had to miss our adventure because of a family illness.

The first order of business was to get Maggi there in time to go on a lunch date with an old high school friend. After some primping and more IPhoning she was off and Jan, Davey and I set out for Jimmy's house.

Somewhere along the line we hooked back up with Maggi and began consuming large quantities of wine. Eventually we stumbled back to our hotel with Jan in tow and crawled to our room laughing until we peed. Maggi wat on the edge of the hide-a-bed and fell through to the floor.

The next morning came all to early as we prepared for our big walk. It was freezing cold! We sat in the car to stay warm while we waited for the race to start. Here is Jan and Davey IPhoning.

We named our team after a saying our dear mother used to always say to us. Pog Mahone, It means kiss my arse. Hard to believe that sweet little woman would use such language with her little angels.

We managed to make it the entire way with Jan and Maggi running half of the distance. They fed us hot dogs at the end making it all worth while. It was definitely something different to do while visiting the Tri Cities.

Later we spent a relaxing afternoon sitting on Jan and Chris' boat. Very nice.

Easter With the Girls

Week had a great Easter weekend with the girls. We started it out by going to see "How to Train Your Dragon" in 3D IMAX. We took Angelita with us. It was a very good movie. Here is a kind of blurry picture of the girls at the movie with their 3D glasses on.

We boiled a bunch of eggs to color. This is before...

...and this is after.

Sunday morning the girls and Kimberly and I went to church. Here is a picture of Jordan and Torrin in thier Easter dresses. They went straight to the back yard where Kevin had hid all the eggs. Fortunately he made a map of where he hid them all so we could find the last few eggs.

I made a carrot cake for dessert. Torrin only wanted to eat the frosting.

The end of a long Easter weekend.