We have an official 2 year old now!

Yesterday, May 30, was Alistair's 2nd birthday! It is so hard to believe that Alistair is now 2! All day we were going, "do you recall what we were doing right now 2 years ago." We tried to make Alistair's day as exciting as possible. We got up and Seth made breakfast. He made sure to include toast with strawberry jam and chicken apple sausages, which are Alistair's favorites. Seth took a half day and after Alistair got up from his nap, we took off for the afternoon/evening. We had a couple of non-birthday-related activities to perform then it was off to dinner. We went to the Olive Garden for dinner. Alistair loves spaghetti and meatballs, so thought this would be an appropriate eating spot. Not only did he have his favorite meal, but he also got to sit in a booster seat instead of a high chair - mostly because they could seat us faster. But he did very well and might be something to consider for future meals out! After dinner we took Alistair to Joe's (formerly GI Joes) for his birthday present. Well he also just loves to run around there, so much to see and climb on. We bought him a helmet for riding his truck and future riding implements and a life preserver for the summer by the water! He wore his helmet all over the store, out to the car and then put it back on once we were on the freeway. He REALLY likes his new helmet. Oh and his helmet size isn't a youth, it is a small adult! (:
When we got done shopping, we went to Blythe Park to go play for a bit. Alistair did A LOT of swinging and then played on the slides and big toy for a bit. We enticed him to head home with a bath, but once we got there he didn't want one. Instead we played in the backyard for a bit.
Here Alistair is modeling his new presents. He took off the life preserver, but continued to wear his helmet until we went to go get dressed for bed.
Our happy little family on a happy day!

Happy Birthday Alistair!! XOXOXO

Camping at Bug Lakes...er...Sun Lakes

Over Memorial Day weekend we went to Sun Lakes State Park over near the Grand Coulee Dam. The weather was pretty nice for the most part, a little rain at times, but nothing hindering our activities. We didn't do too much: took the dogs on walks and swimming, took Alistair to the big toy and drove to the dam.

Alistair hanging out with the dogs and throwing dirt with his shovel

I took my kayak out on Sunday in one of the lakes. It was a nice day, not too much wind, which provided me with a nice paddle from one end of the lake to the other and back.

Alistair wanted to sit in the kayak with me, maybe we should get him a life vest and see if he wants to go out with me! My kayak has a child seat in it!

Of course our trip was not without incident(s)! The first happened Friday night. The wind can get very strong there, as we experienced on the last night of our trip last year. Well the winds whipped up Friday night and toppled our tent and contents before we even had a chance to sleep in it! We ended up going out and pulling everything out, stuffing the tent into the car and sleeping on our air mattress on the floor of Seth's parent's trailer. We ended up doing this for the whole trip as the wind just never wanted to cooperate and we didn't want to take any chances with Alistair (his crib got toppled pretty easily).

Now you see it......now you don't!

The other big incident was Alistair being made into a mosquito meal. We brought bug spray and put him in long clothing and hats and sprayed him down tons. He stayed fairly bite free except for his face. We weren't even out of the car 5 minutes on Friday when he got a bite above his right eye. By Saturday his eyelid was visibly swollen and slightly hindering his sight. By that evening Judy the nurse decided that if it didn't look better by Sunday morning, we should take him somewhere to have him examined. We got up at 6am on Sunday (Alistair got us up early all weekend) and found Alistair with an almost swollen shut eye. So after we got some food in him, Seth and Alistair and I hopped in the car and drove about 30 miles to Ephrata to the ER. They looked him over, told us it was a bad reaction to mosquito bites, gave us a dosing amount for Benadryl and told us to keep him on it until the swelling went down.

Alistair having ice cream in the car. You can see how swollen his right eye is in this photo, and it was getting better by that point!

His eye looked back to normal on Tuesday. Now he just looks like he has had the chicken pox or something. We were going to do his 2 year portraits on Friday, but I think we will wait until his bites clear-up! The last little fun tidbit was our visitors at 12:30 at night on Friday. We had all gone to bed by 11 or so. I had finally fallen asleep when I heard pounding. I laid there for a moment and then realized someone was knocking on the door. I got up and walked over to the door. Here is the transcript:

Me: Hello?

Them: Yeah, you are in our spot!

I open the door, they are probably 20ish, Me: What?

Them: We are supposed to be in #67 and this is it, you are in our spot. We called the ranger this morning to confirm and he told us we were in #67

Me: Well we checked in yesterday (David and Judy went over a day earlier than us, but I didn't want to confuse them so I said we) and they checked us in for the whole weekend, this can't be your spot.

Them: The ranger told us #67. I don't know who is in the next spot (gesturing to our empty spot where the car is parked) but...

Me: That is our spot, our tent got blown over earlier so we are sleeping here.

Them: Oh, your tent got blown over, that sucks!

By this time Judy pokes her head out of the other door, Judy: Can I help you?

Them: Yeah, you are in our spot

Judy: We have been here since Thursday night and are checked through until Monday

Them: "expletives!!!!" I can't believe this, this sucks. They better give us a cabin for the mix-up!

Me: There is nobody in the spot across the street. Just go camp there and we will figure it all out tomorrow morning.

I thought about it after they took my advice and left. There are no cabins in the state park, but in the resort across the way there are. There is a Sun Lakes Resort as well as a Sun Lakes State Park, I bet they are supposed to be camping there. It can be a bit confusing and it doesn't help when you arrive after midnight! I am not sure what they were expecting when they knocked on our door. Did they think we were going to go through the rigamorale of hooking up the trailer to move it wherever at 12:30 at night? Probably! They moved the next morning to their correct spot. But nothing gets your heart pumping than getting a knock on the door after midnight in a campground out in the middle of nowhere!!

Our Kitchen is Finished...Kind Of...

Our countertops were installed last Wednesday and the plumber came out the next day to hook-up all the undersink gadgets - more than we wanted to tackle ourselves and have it work without leaking! As of Friday morning we were up and cooking and washing and enjoying! It is really nice to have the new space. We only pushed out the existing kitchen footprint a foot, but moving the fridge to the opposite wall and removing the walls between the kitchen and dining room really opened up the space and made all the difference. The most impressive and exciting thing is the amount of counterspace we now have. Before our counterspace was limited to the bit on either side of the stove and either side of the sink. We ran out of it pretty fast during most meals! Also we have a nice, deep sink where we can wash our stock pots without accidentally spraying water on everything because we got too close to the nozzle. Our old sink was a whopping 6 inches deep! Wow! After having done this, with most projects, we say to ourselves, "why didn't we do this sooner??"! Now the project isn't done, mind you. We still have to get flooring. But we can live with the subfloor for a bit. With the weather getting warmer (FINALLY), we won't be wasting heat or freezing. We will be getting the same flooring throughout the entire main floor, we just need to find the right stuff!