Before, During & After

If you are looking to see how beautiful my kids are in this post - sorry, look next time:) this is all me baby!!!

A big thanks to my friend Becca, before we moved she permed my hair so here are the before, during - unfortunately - and after. A very cute little 3 year old was taking the last 2 pictures:) He prefers funny faces so I threw in the silly one for him.

Puget Sound

Saturday was a fairly nice day so we tried to go out to the Sound, it's a few miles from our house. Not a good idea. We were there exactly 18 minutes then we couldn't take it anymore, Brandon & Kenzie had already gone to the car - Dillon and I wanted to jump in the ocean with his rain boots. Not as much fun as we thought on a windy miserably freezing day. We discovered it's much colder by the water:) We tried again yesterday and it was perfect!!! The weather was perfect, the sun was shining and the kids were, well for the most part - happy. Dillon told us his tummy hurt, I asked him a whole bunch of questions about it and he said it hurt cause he was tired of walking so much and he needed to be carried:)


Kenzie was really scared at first and wouldn't even let me put her down - very rare is a desire to be held to this was a nice little cuddle time. She let loose after a while and was running around in no time (with me fearfully chasing two steps behind her!!!)



The kids like saying hi to everyone, that was cute and adorable in Boise but here we are encountering ALL different types of people - some of whom might not like being said hi to by nosy babies - I was wrong though. Even gansta lookin' thugs will smile and say hi to small children inside their space bubble.
Dillon is into making strange faces & poses during pictures, we have very few normal smiles anymore.

Except this cute happy little squinty eyed one:)

On the way home we saw Mt. Rainier - very cool because normally it's way too cloudy to even see the sun and it's shining:)

The Big Move

Checking in to let all know that the Bradshaw clan made it to our destination safely. We are all doing well, with the exception of the slave driver who thinks a house should be completely unpacked, organized and clean in a matter of days... wonder who that is?!?!? For those who don't know we just moved from our beloved home (with 4 bedrooms and TONS of storage on a few acres) in Idaho to a tiny little apartment just outside Seattle in Kent. (I suppose if you compare this apartment to the one when we first married we really are moving up in the world:) ) So far so good.

Dillon & Kenzie seem to be adjusting well. Yesterday was beautiful and sunny so the kids were outside playing in the play ground (along with about 20 other kids!) They were the only white ones, Dillon didn't even notice. I thought he'd have questions about that but not a word. He's made friends with a little Mexican girl from across the way, she only speaks Spanish so they talk back and forth not understanding a single thing the other one says. Every now and then Dillon will throw in a little made up garble trying to sound like Spanish - it's pretty funny. He has a follower too. A tiny little girl (Kenzie's size but clearly older) walked right up to me and said, "Hi-ya, I'm Darcy, what's your babies name, she's pretty cute, why's she so sad, my moms at home talkin' but I'm here with my... (she went for quite a while:) ) (the Texas accent made it even cuter) She followed Dillon around most of the day yesterday, he didn't seem to mind too much.

Church on Sunday was good. The ward seems really friendly and excited about new blood:) The kids did okay too. Kenzie has previously done really badly in nursery - if she'd go at all, there is a very take charge nursery leader, when Brandon walked in she took Kenzie and kicked him out. She said she'll have Kenzie enjoying nursery in a few weeks. Good luck to her on that one.

All in all we are doing pretty good. Missing my family and friends terribly but doing well. As soon as I find my camera I'll post a bunch of our new place.

Ohh, super cool, we found out that next month the whales are migrating, so we are going to the ocean!!! Tomorrow is Brandon's b-day and we are planning to go to the aquarium - depending of course on the rain... On of our goals for this year, for the year we live here, is to be tourists. We want to see everything. Thinking of it makes me tired:) but sooooo excited!

Oh, a definite down side is that you don't have any tv unless you get cable or something - how do you survive no tv???

You've never seen green until you've seen Seattle! The week we picked our apartment was my first time here. It's so beautiful, jaw dropping, almost tearfully beautiful. How could I have never been here before?

I know my posts are few and far between but forgive a crazy lady her failings a few more times. Man, I was looking at some of your blogs and got all depressed, FYI - your blogs are sooooo much cooler than mine:)

We are all alive...

Brandon got back on Friday from two weeks in Oregon for a work training test. WE ALL LIVED!! I didn't think it would happen, but it's finally over and I am a much happier mommy. Brandon and I were having the "who had it worse" debate, whether it was worse to be gone from your kids and wife all alone in a strange city, and eating out every night. I think I win, but it was a really close one:) During the long, lonely, two weeks...

Kenzie is a daddy's girl to the core and lets anyone around her, who is not her daddy know it. She was (and still is) teething, complete with fever, runny nose, diarrhea and all out misery, combine that with missing her dad, we had a fun two weeks.

Dillon was trying to see Kenzie at the store and tipped the cart on top of himself, Kenz and all. He has my screaming ability and he uses it each time he is injured, just bruises for both of them, thank goodness.

I had to spend my b-day without my wonderful husband:( He did send some beautiful flowers though and let me shop all I wanted:).

A few days later Dillon fell and cut his chin really badly and I had the mental debate (without my very calm husbands presence) of whether we needed to get Dillon stitches - in the end he got a butterfly bandaid, a movie and a sucker:) The next morning he peeled off and threw away the bandaid and informed me that since it was gone so was his owie. I noticed that while I was not trying to calm a little screaming boy dripping blood off his chin and praying he was okay so we wouldn't have to go to the hospital at 9pm and wake his sleeping sister, that his cut was much smaller than the amount of blood spilled. Stinkin' head wounds! (He's sleeping there, sorry for the up the nose shot:) )
He's being Mr. Cool here by the way. I bribed him with YoGo's to have his picture taken but he still wouldn't do a normal smile.

Kenzie got some hand me down shoes - if we haven't already established, Kenzie, in true girl fashion is obsessed with shoes - she insisted on wearing these ones and was being so cute I had to take her picture - probably for the first time in her life she participated willingly!!!
Dang it, have you seen how cute these kids are??? I think he wins, I would go crazy with neither of them to take care of - though a day or two might be really nice . . .
She looks like a girl who has had 20 tons of hairspray, a pick and a blow dryer. Not that though, hers is combination green bean juice, and pulling her piggy tails out:)
Dillon decorated this house all by himself. I took the kids to mutual with me while Bran was gone, the older girls were doing gingerbread houses for other kids in the ward and Dillon jumped right in.
All in all, we survived, but we are glad our sweet daddy/husband is home to take care of us!

Bountiful Bubbles & Blessings

We LOVE bubble baths here and the kids recently discovered turning the jets on in the tub - hence the monster amount of bubbles!! Kenzie isn't so sure if this is the thing for her but she always comes back for more, maybe because she wants to eat them. Dillon begs to have a bath everyday now.

I love the picture of Dillon with the shadow across his face, I'm not certain why I like it so much, possibly because I'm his mother and everything he does and everything to do with him is adorable:)

We are trying our hardest to survive the next two weeks - Brandon is gone to Oregon for some very in depth training and tests to see if he is ready to take over his own branch. It's going to be tough (on all of us), but I expect lots of emails and phone calls from you guys!!! Little daddy's girl Kenzie seems to be having the hardest time with it, combine that with 2 teeth coming in and a cold and we're having a great time. It's only Tuesday, it feels like it should be Friday. This should be interesting.

Man, I cannot believe how quickly Dillon is learning things. Everyone says kids are like sponges, I've learned that is so true. He was playing and something wasn't going right so he stood up and yelled,"What the heck?!?!" He is totally eating up letters right now. He loves his name. Everywhere we go he looks for the letters in his name and mommy, he'll starts yelling like theres a fire if he sees one.

Have I told you all how much I love Christmas? It is the greatest feeling on earth. Christmas just makes me feel happy. It's so much more fun now that I have kids. It's more about giving than it ever was before, which is maybe why I like it so much better. I miss the 12 days of Christmas though. My mom made us special pillow cases with pockets in them and starting on my b-day every year we'd wake up with little treats in the pockets. Not big stuff but special stuff, like a note saying we could make cookies with her that day, we could get a back massage, or little things like nail polish, candies, a tape. (back in the day:) ) It was like Christmas everyday! I tried doing it for Brandon but it just wasn't the same, he doesn't get too excited about stuff. Oh well. I want to do it for Dillon but Kenz is probably a little young. Well, Merry Christmas everyone.