Jumpers

Friday morning Jared was able to take us to go see some jumpers. It was quite the ordeal getting to the jump site. He was given directions, but they were very general. We were in a hurry to get to the jump site so we wouldn’t miss the jumps, and we ended up not being patient enough and turned too early. Jared tried to drive us through a lake to get to where he thought we should be. It wasn’t really a lake, but the water was way to high. He thought we could make it through, and after driving about 10 feet, and me telling him to stop I opened my door to find the water about an inch below the car he decided to listen to me and find another way. The only problem was the other way was driving right through the drop zone. The good thing was the Chinook helicopter was on the ground so we didn’t get into any trouble, but everyone was looking at us like and I am sure thinking “oh there are those idiots that drove through the drop zone”. Once we got parked it was a lot of fun watching all the jumpers and the helicopter land to pick up more jumpers. The type of helicopter was a Chinook, they have two sets of blades. Each time the Chinook would circle 10 soldiers would jump. It would circle around again and then another 10 would jump. After the 20 jumpers went the helicopter would land and pick up another 20. They had over 80 jumpers so we were able to watch several jumps. It was a pretty good time. 

Here is the Chinook getting ready to leave.

 

Here they go...

I was a little nervous, so I would count each time and make sure there was 10 parachutes.

 

Here are a few landing. They said you don't want to get too close cause it hurts and you will hear some words you don't want to hear.

 

Once the chinook landed soldiers would get off and start getting the next group ready.

 

It was a fun time, well a little stressful, but pretty exciting to see it so close up.

 

Kiddos these days

We have a family membership to the Y. Included in our membership the kids can participate in several activities. Reagan has swimming lessons with mommy and gymnastics. Brayden has swimming lessons, gymnastics and basketball. This was his last day of basketball, he was too excited to look at the camera.
Reagan loves to put on my hat, any hat for that matter. She is so funny and thinks she is so cool when she gets to wear a hat.Last Saturday I went with some friends to lunch to celebrate an upcoming baby arrival. Jared took the kids to the park. It was freezing so they didn't stay long, but as you can see Reagan had a blast. She loves going down the slide.
Last week it snowed; the kids had a blast going outside with daddy. Brayden thought it was pretty funny to knock on the door and then hide. When I would come to the door he would throw a snowball at me. He was a little shocked when I went out back and made my own snowball to throw back at him.
This is Reagan doing her work. She loves when she can sneak the computer away from Brayden. She still loves the stairs and if I don't know where she is I usually can find her on the stairs.
While Reagan takes her nap I let Brayden do things that are a little to difficult to do when sister is awake. Today he wanted to draw on the white board while I did some work on the computer. I looked down to check out his drawing and found him drawing this. He told me it was a volcano and it was about to explode. I thought it was pretty good.

Reagan oh so tired

I was busy cleaning up the kitchen, I turned around to see Reagan oh so tired.

Brayden's Preschool

We got to Washington in September and I immediately started looking into preschools for Brayden. I didn't feel good about any of them, and after much stress decided I was okay with him not attending preschool and my focus needed to be on other things, like unpacking. Since we are feeling a bit more settled and Brayden has mentioned preschool more often lately I decided to attempt having preschool twice a week at our house. I spent about a week figuring it all out, and mapping out what we would learn over the three months I would try it. When the first day came Brayden could hardly stand it. We invited a friend of Brayden's to join us and Sophia was pretty excited to. Here they are on their first day. I could hardly get Brayden to stand still so this was as good as it gets.
They had a great time fishing for letters and painting. I just hope I can keep up on it.

Daddy's Treat

Jared has been working a lot lately. He is waiting on one more guy to get security clearance before he can start working, so they have been a little short handed, meaning he has been working later than normal. On Friday he called and asked if he needed to pick anything up for dinner. I did need him to pick a few things up, and I told him to get a treat for dessert. Well Daddy brought home a very special treat...sundaes! He got the waffle bowl, chocolate syrup, caramel, and even cherries. The kids loved making them as much as they liked eating their special treat.

Mt. Rainier

Jared is the Young Men's basketball coach for our ward, and the games are on Saturdays. So Saturday he had a game and after the game we decided to drive up to Mt. Rainier last minute. Mt. Rainier is always so beautiful when we get to see it on a clear day, and we have been talking about getting up there this winter so we thought why not. We headed up and the kids slept most of the way up. We spent most of our time in the lodge. Then we came out to get into the car and Brayden wanted to go climb on the snow. Most people come up to sled, but we weren't really prepared for that, and since we didn't leave until late afternoon we thought we could just check it out and save the sledding for another time. Brayden was not very happy that we spent all our time in the building, as he called it. So Reagan and I sat in the car while Brayden and Jared played in the snow. I thought it would be a few minutes, but it was more like 30 minutes. Brayden had a blast even with the Popsicle finger he had when he returned to the car. It will be fun to get up there again soon and do some sledding. Here is Reagan inside the lodge. This is her new smile face.
This is me with the kids in front of Mt. Rainier.Daddy and Brayden having fun in the snow.

Sunbeams

Sunday was Brayden’s first day in primary as a sunbeam. I was a little disappointed that his first day in sunbeams wouldn’t be in our own ward, but Brayden didn’t seem to mind. Kira was with us and my parent’s primary meets in the Chapel. So Brayden, Kira and I were in the very back, because we didn’t know where there class was. The sister conducting asked if there were any visitors and Brayden in the very back row raised his hand (I am not even sure how he knew to do that), once she noticed him in the very back she asked Brayden and Kira to come up on stage. They sang “Here We Are Together” and they put Brayden and Kira’s name in the song, they both thought that was so awesome. After the song they went and sat with their class, and then they were off. Hailey and I watched from the door as Brayden helped Kira and sat right by her, she was a little nervous about being in primary. Brayden seemed very helpful and he was excited to be in primary. After we got home from church the kids played primary all afternoon. We had to find the song they sang, and we would have to pick new name so we could keep singing the song. It was very funny and I am really happy that Brayden loves primary. While I was helping Brayden get to primary it was Reagan’s first day in nursery without me, she isn't old enough, but since my mom is one of the nursery leaders they let her go;which made it easy for Reagan to have a good time. We’ll see how she does when we get back to our ward and there is no brother or anyone she knows. Here is Brayden ready for sunBEAMs!
Nursery here I come! (love the smile face)