Skip to main content

November 2016 - Seattle

The highlight this month was driving to Seattle to see Grandma and Grandpa Sweeny on their mission.  Tyler and Tad ended up with hand, foot, and mouth and had some miserable nights, but we were so happy to be together.

Day 1: We got to the Seattle Institute right as Grandma was finishing her last class, so it was fun to see her teach and meet some of the students.  She immediately grabbed Tad for a good cuddle.  Then we saw some of the University of Washington campus and visited a fun history museum in the rain.

Day 2: We took the kids to Canada!  We went to the beautiful Capilano Suspension Bridge Park outside of Vancouver, where we explored a temperate rain forest.  They have suspension bridges between the canopies of trees, so you're walking from tree to tree about 100 feet off the ground.  

Day 3: We celebrated Thanksgiving at Mom and Dad's apartment.  We went outside to play and blow bubbles, went to the Sheraton Hotel to see their gingerbread house display, and to the Institute to play hide and seek, charades, Jenga, pool, foosball, and ping pong.

Day 4: We ran around downtown Seattle and saw the Space Needle, Pike Place, rode the Giant Ferris Wheel, and played at the zoo park.  The kids had a blast feeding french fries to the seagulls at the pier.

Other highlights of November--

Alexa did a great job on her Primary church program this month.  She sang loudly and wasn't shy at all ;).

Here is a short video of our favorite song she sang during the program, titled Gethsemane.

Kyle was invited to join a friend for a corporate flag football tournament at the BYU practice fields and now Alexa tells everyone her dad plays on the BYU football team.  Haha.  It was freezing cold, but we had lots of fun cheering him on.

We usually do family movie night on Fridays and decided to show the kids the original Star Wars movies.  We have some Star Wars books so they know most of the characters.  They have been talking "like Chewbacca" and it's absolutely hilarious.  Thankfully, I was able to capture it on video.

We had a great visit from Kurt & Romy this month.  Romy's visa went through so they will be married in a few weeks!  Alexa loves to follow Romy around and try on all of her clothes and jewelry.  Romy calls Alexa her little princess and has taught her a few words in German.

The kids helped rake all of the leaves in the backyard and had a blast jumping in the pile.  Tad was not content to watch from his blanket and joined right in on the fun.



Our silly kids keep us on our toes and laughing all the time.  Pictures below from Tyler the super hero pinching all evil that comes our way, a lion he drew at my office, preparing for his future with glasses, lots of naked peaches in the bath tub, practicing writing letters on my computer, enticing Tad up the stairs with his karate belt, and other fun.





Comments

Popular posts from this blog

stairs and a silly little girl....

I forgot to mention a few August updates in my last post, and have some more Alexa stories (as always)...First, Kyle (with the help of Uncle Paul and Todd--thank you!!) finished the stairs and they look awesome!!  He completely rebuilt them (ripped them down all the way to the drywall). Second, both Kyle and I were supposed to be in this work athletic competition in August, but I had to back out for obvious reasons.  Kyle still did the tennis and basketball tournaments and made me oh so proud.  He even got this funny little basketball trophy for taking third place.  The other tournaments that week included horseshoes, ping pong, foosball, golf, Wii dance, volleyball, and a triathlon. We went to Ikea for breakfast last Saturday (so delicious and cheap!) and bought Alexa a stuffed puppy while we were there.  She now takes it everywhere continuously saying "puppy, puppy, puppy!"  Speaking of the puppy, she even dragged it through toilet water last week.  Yes, you

December 2015 - Christmas in Indiana

Merry Christmas! We hit the road a couple of days after Granny's funeral to make the trek to Indiana for Christmas. The  kids did great the whole way.  I think it was harder on the adults!  We left at 4am and the first 8 hours were really bad due to wind and snow.  I-70 was closed unless you had chains and we were only a couple of hours in when we passed a sign saying I-80 was closed due to an avalanche warning.  Kyle screamed "Noooo!" and woke up the kids :).  We were so relieved to have Wyoming behind us!!  And we were very glad to have been driving an SUV with all-wheel-drive instead of our Toyota Matrix.  We got a new Mazda CX-9 only a week before the trip so that we can fit baby #3. We pounded out 14 hours the first day and then stopped for the night in Nebraska before continuing for another 10ish hours the next day.  The kids thought that sleeping in a hotel was amazing.  The weather on the drive home was clear and wonderful. although Tyler did poop h

July 2023 - Baby Ian

We had a blast at the Stadium of Fire Journey concert with Sara and Jason.  We also hosted a Swingle 4th of July party at our house.  Grandpa Swingle said that's the first time he's actually been able to light real fireworks in over a decade.  We decided we should make it a tradition to have them come up every year (or move here ;). Baby Ian was born and he is HUGE!  11 lb 1 oz.  Melissa's water broke at 7:30am, contractions started after that, and he was born at home with a team of paramedics with them in the outbuilding at 9am.   Fun fact: he was born on Ian Beagley's birthday and they share the same name. We spent an entire Saturday pulling down and cutting up dead trees.  We rented a wood splitter and went to town.  The kids were a big help.  We did our annual reading challenge to earn tickets to Lagoon.  Our rule is 1000 pages for every grade level finished, has to be during summer, and Alexa and Tyler both had to write a book report as well.  The kids did great! M