sandpoint, july 2010

tagg and i were able to ride the coat tails of my family yet again to spend another fantastic week in sandpoint. and even though i wasnt able to participate in some of my favorite activities (tubing, bridge jumping....) we managed to have a great time.

dakota, olivia and anna getting ready for some major tubing.

the terrifying walk on the train tracks.....

mackenzie showing of her diving skills.

tagg wanted to jump SO badly. he kept saying "me jump too!" instead, he settled for encouraging (read: yelling) at the others to jump quicker.

grace was so brave and made her first jump.

happy boaters.

that nite, we had dinner at THE DIVE. and it was A dive. the food was inedible and the service atrocious. but that place did boast one advantage..... a mechanical bull!

tagg was in pure heaven.

everyone got a turn (except for me, boo) and it was so much fun.

oh yeah, and the place had an arm wrestling table. i lost to everyone except for anna. quite depressing. i love how serious megan and my mom are in this shot. scary.

after dinner (if you could call it that) we walked around downtown. i was so grateful for everyone's help with tagg during the entire week. and tagg wasnt hating life either!

ok, so its official. i have knighted "hey cupcake" with the honor of baking my favorite cupcake. they are ugly little things but the best tasting cake and frosting i have ever tried. congratulations, "hey cupcake", you should feel proud.

the next day, it was more sun on the dock.

tagg's number one favorite thing to do while in sandpoint was to play in tyler's toy room. that place is loaded up with the best toys (FOUR buzz lightyears) and tagg loved every minute of it.

the next nite, we roasted marshmallows and sat around the fire telling our most embarrassing moments. where was craig when i needed him? he is always up for a lively round of roasting whitney.

mackenzie, tucker and tagg at the campfire.

on our last nite there, the adults got all dressed up and headed across the lake for a nice dinner.....

on a freaking boat! we loaded up the rands' boat, dressed in our finest, to "drive" over to the restaurant. i know its funny, but my little white trash family felt like rock stars!

shelly, becky, megan, holly, my mom and me.

taylor was pinching himself too. it was a perfect nite.

well, almost perfect. jon forgot his shoes. :)

the dinner group.

on our way home from a fabulous nite. what a fun time! maybe a little too much fun because i went to the doctor this morning and i am already dilated to a two (not THAT intense but i am not due for another month) and the doctor said i needed to slow down or he would be seeing me (and the baby) a lot sooner........

guess i should wake up.....

this is my son, waiting for me to get my pregnant body out of bed to feed him breakfast. so classy.

our own place, again.

we moved out of my parents' house last month.... a. because it had been three years and i am sure even the FUNNEST of house guests can wear out their welcome :) and b. baby #2 needed his/her own room. so we packed our things and made the loooong trek to redmond (about three minutes from my parents' house).

it took a little buttering-up of craig to get him to hang this massive quilt on the wall. but i figure if we cant paint, we should have some kind of color on the walls. i really love it!

yup. those are tissue poms hanging permanently in my dining room. i love those little things so much why not have them up all the time?!

even though it is fabulous to decorate and live in our own place i will never forget the precious years that we lived at my parents' house. they will never know how much it meant to craig and me to let us shack up with them for three years. those were some great times!

josé, can you see?

tagg and i just returned from our vacation to utah/idaho for the fourth of july. this was my patriotic boy during the national anthem.

i was nervous to fly by myself with tagg. i mean, he isnt the most low-energy human i know and i am eight months pregnant. but nothing a little candy and barney on dvd cant help.....

i went a day early to utah in hopes that jocelyn and lucy would meet up with us. but no such luck. so tagg and i killed the evening at university mall. i loved the people watching and he loved the fake dinosaur.

let the party begin! the gees were the first to show up to utah (btw, we were all in the beehive state to attend my mom's family reunion) so we headed down to rubios for lunch.

then we drove up to park city to take the kiddies on the alpine slide. tagg loved the ski lift....

and the slide. he kept trying to pull my hands of the brake so we could go "FASTER!".

no pit stop is complete until we get some sort of sugar in our systems.

the next day, tucker showed tagg all the wyoming fireworks they had purchased for the fourth. tagg's shirt explains how he felt about his rocket.

we spent the afternoon at cowabunga bay. and yes, you dont have to ask craig twice where tagg gets his dumbo ears from..... me.

me and my fish. seriously, he had no problem kindly asking me to "stay away" and jumping straight into the deep end. the only problem is that he doesnt know how to swim. that doesnt bother him one bit. in fact, at one point he went under and choked on water and when i pulled him up he laughed his head off.

another stop on my to-do list for utah was the busy biddy. its this little boutique that sells all the gaudy utah crap one could ever want. tagg was more interested in the tractor in the parking lot.

the next day, we headed up to paris idaho to celebrate the fourth (or in this year's case, the third) of july. tagg loved spending time with his uncle, tay.

while everyone else enjoyed the fourth of july musical inside the paris tabernacle, tagg and i walked around and took pictures.

he loved this blow-up uncle sam doll. i coudnt pry him away from it.

then it was time for the parade!

noah and tagg watching the floats/pick-up trucks/midget horses.

the "family reunion". ok, so really it wasnt a traditional family reunion with multiple branches of the family tree... it was just mom and pop, their four daughters and their families. and to be honest, we see each other several times a year. but we'll take another party when we can get it.

not so much edward cullen but more like a really haggard mari short.

brooke, adam and me at the raspberry shake stand.

where did taylor come from? he looks like a roman/mexican. i would kill for his gorgeous olive skin.

some of the women (where's mom?) in the kitchen at the paris house.

then the fireworks began. little did tagg know he was in for one scary nite.... somehow my brothers were the ones put in charge of the explosive display. that didnt turn out to be the brightest of ideas. long story, short: mortars exploded. on the trampoline. where tagg and i were sitting. had to throw tagg off the tramp. rolled my fat belly onto the ground. everyone was running and screaming. something out of a really bad nitemare.

hence tagg's depressed/terrified face. we quickly tried to get him back to being interested in the fireworks so he wouldnt be scarred for life.

it worked.

on the actual fourth of july we flew back home just in time for tagg to shoot off fireworks with craig (craig couldnt come to utah because he started his residency).

overall, it was a fun and memorable vacation. oh yeah, tagg was stung by a wasp for the first time. i was able to go to all my favorite utah stores and eat all the good utah food. and tagg loved spending time with his cousins and uncles. love you, family!

maybe this was the day.....

we took tagg to his first mariners game last week. you know how all the star athletes say they remember the day when they were three and their dad took them to the ball field and that was the day the decided they were going to go pro? well i was telling myself that this was the day when tagg told himself that.

but quite honestly, he couldnt stop shoveling kettle corn into his mouth long enough to even glance at the field.....

cotton candy was a big hit too. pure sugar. pure tagg heaven.

i loved being at safeco with tagg and craig on such a beautiful nite. and the mariners won!

one of my favorite places in seattle, safeco field. (and we had cuban before the game so it really was a great nite)

a cute asian tourist took this picture of us. she was so excited to do it. craig said she probably wanted a picture of her taking a picture of us. oh, craig.