Wedding Weekend

Our friends got married last weekend! It was a beautiful, relaxed weekend at Lake Quinault. Pat was the Officiant and I was the Koumbara/photographer/florist/planner. Even wearing so many hats I was able to kick back and relax. I even got to play around with my camera, something I haven't been able to do since Winter. 

The beautiful family all fancied up!

Nolan reading at the reception with cheeks full of Jordan Almonds.

The next day, the kids went adventuring to a giant tree and I followed along with my camera.

After tree climbing we watched the fish in the creek for a bit.

Before heading for a hike to the waterfalls.

It was a magical weekend all around and I am so grateful we got to share it with them.

Snow day!

San Diego

We took the boys to San Diego as a christmas present, mostly to get them to Legoland but also so would could escape the cold for a few days. San Diego didn't disappoint! Most of our legoland pictures are on my phone and I haven't unloaded them yet but here are a few of our adventures. 

The San Diego zoo was so fun! First thing we did was take the tour bus around to see the major exhibits. 

Then we took the sky train across for an aerial view of the park. Miles wasn't so sure of flying through the air, but he came around. 

The polar bears put on the best show. I have spent quite a bit of time at zoos but I have never seen the polar bears move, not once. These ones were jumping in the water, playing with toys, rolling around. We stayed and watched them for quite a while.

Then we took the escalator type thing up the hill and the boys wanted a picture they were so impressed. I was impressed with all the transportation options. It's a huge park and we saw 99% of it thanks to all the non walking options. yay for laziness!

The monkey exhibit was also really interesting. Nolan really enjoyed this gorilla.  

And Miles and this Bonobos monkey seemed to really hit it off. Miles was playing with a plant he found on the ground and this monkey ran up to the window to watch him play with it. Then when other people walked by she would run off and come right back when they moved along to keep hanging out with Miles.

Back at Legoland, we got to meet a Lego celebrity, Kai.

I really need to teach my children to keep their hands to themselves. 

Nolan and Pat are riding this roller coaster for the second time, they are in the last seat. 

iPhone offload: Going WAY back

Family picture on our first successful camping trip

Bumping Lake was so peaceful

That one time Emmie and I got to pretend we were VIPs at Bumbershoot.

Miles feeling sassy on his way to his first day of preschool.

When we took a bunch of friends to the high school homecoming game.

When these guys dressed up as a police offer canine unite (police officer and a german shepherd)

And then got to pose with the real Renton canine unit officer.

Emmie and I took the monorail to zombie prom.

We pulled together a family costume for a party. 

First family seahawks game. They won! And then the kids got to dance with Blue Thunder and we got in a train accident on the way home. It was an adventurous Thursday night!

Ruby got in on the matching pjs this year. She obviously loved it!

Family picture at Candy Cane lane on Christmas Eve.

Ruby guarding Nolan when he was home sick from school.

Christmas

Another fun Christmas for the Clingman's! We kicked it off with a super cold photoshoot for our xmas cards. This guy wasn't having any of it. But I did get him to crack a little smile. 

When I uploaded the pictures to my computer, my computer was having none of that and promptly shut itself down causing me to freak out, cry a little and panic on the phone with Apple support. Luckily they were able retrieve all my photos except this last batch since it didn't have a chance to save itself to the memory before it crashed. But the good new is I finally figured out how to use my external hard drive! yay. I grabbed these blurry out takes from the christmas card site I ordered from, luckily they had a few saved although not great quality. Oh well!

Nolan has figured out if he smiles and holds still these photoshoots go a lot faster. He hasn't shared this bit of info with Miles as he made me work for the shot we ended up using.

 On to Christmas day. We did lots of merriment between these two events which I will have to pry out of my iPhone at some point soon. Not a lot of photos of christmas morning, although I did get this one of Miles' epic bed head.

And a bunch of blurry excited kid pics.

Of course we finally got to share this big news with the boys. They didn't have an immediate excited reaction that we thought they would.  They have built excitement as we countdown to the big day though for sure. 12 days to go!

Christmas dinner has moved to Yaya's house! We're mixing things up and now that Yaya is settled into her house we decided to meet there. A big plus for us since she is a 5 minute drive. These two little boys finally figured out they have a built in playmate cousin. It only took 4 years!! They were pretty much inseparable and played really well together. So worth the 4 years of side eyes and toy grabs.

Someone is a big Dutchy fan!!

Meanwhile the big kids practices their kick boxing outside? Whatever they were doing they had fun.

We bribed the kids with opening presents to get one good photo of all of them. This will just have to do!

Emmie insisted on matching PJs for all this year. I think they pulled it off well.

You can't see it here but Emmie has matching pjs too. I phoned it in with a matching bow. After dinner, presents, and desserts this was the best we could get everyone to cooperate. Not too bad for my squirmy guys. Nolan is obviously feeling it.

Grumpy about Christmas being over. Until next year!