Christmas Morning

A few pictures of Ada enjoying the gift opening process.

Bellingham Day

I forgot about these pictures! About a month ago, Ada and I met up with Todd for lunch at his office. After lunch we walked over to the salmon spawning facility to see the last few salmon of the season. To put it nicely, the fish complete their lifecycle here and then their reproductive parts are harvested for future salmon 🙂

Todd had to return to work so Ada and I had a nice walk along the water before heading back to our car. We saw a couple harbor seals and lots of ducks. Oh, and after all these years of living here, I never noticed the giant heart-shaped ivy growing downtown. It was pretty 🙂

Cousin Fun

My sister-in-law Kali came up for a visit right after Thanksgiving to keep me company while Todd was in Arizona. Bryden and baby Layla came up to play with Ada too. They had a lot of fun, despite the lack of sleep we got. It was a special time with family 🙂

Christmas Tree

This year is was FREEZING picking out our trees. Normally my friend and I take about 45 minutes to an hour deciding on the perfect trees. Not this year! We took about 5 minutes each to pick a tree. We were all so cold from the icy wind, even bundled up from head to toe. My fingers were painfully numb which limited my photo taking 🙂

The best picture of the day (with my phone of course) was of the kids in the car after they started thawing out with the hot chocolate I made for them 🙂

Halloween

Ada probably had her best year in candy. We started late afternoon trick-or-treating through old town Fairhaven, then to our church for dinner/games/candy and then through our neighborhood for more candy. It was fun, but a long 5 hours of walking around.

Ada wanted to be Anna from Frozen this year, she was pretty cute 🙂

Pumpkin Patch

I am finally getting to my fall pictures, even though our Christmas decorations are already up 🙂

We have been going to Stoney Ridge the last couple of years since Ada’s been around. It’s a fun place for her and we always enjoy sharing the mini doughnuts 🙂

Chain Lakes

At the end of August we hiked with our friends, the Carpenters, up at Mt. Baker. We did about 5.5 miles of the loop with 3 kids. We saw wild pheasants, marmots and pikas. The pikas (little rodents) were fun to listen to along the way, they sounded like squeaker toys. I think this was my favorite hike of the summer, the change of scenery was beautiful even though it was mostly cloudy (blocked the mountain views). We did have a few breaks of sunshine along with rain & mist. A sunny day would make for a gorgeous hike, maybe next year 🙂

Round 2

We are happy to announce a little bundle of joy coming our way mid April! Ada is super excited to have a brother or a sister (leaning towards a sister), but we will be waiting to find out until the birth. So far things are going well and I am looking forward to being done with the all-day nausea and fatigue (hopefully before April) 🙂

Red & Pink

A few flowers that were new to the garden this year, plus a little silly girl with a popsicle stained mouth 🙂

Dock Butte Hike

About a month ago, we went for a lovely hike to the top of Dock Butte. From there we had an almost (some haze) 360 view of the North Cascades including Mt. Baker, Twin Sisters, and Mt. Shuksan. Ada made the whole 3 mile round trip hike with little complain (1400 ft. incline on the way up plus an added mile to see Blue Lake). She is turning into one great hiker.