Catching up . . . again

Well, the last few weeks have been rough for me. April 6th marked the 1 year anniversary of my mom's passing. In the weeks leading up to it, I was sad . . . a lot. I just missed my mom. It was hard.

Also during those weeks, my dad announced that he is going to get married this summer. I love my dad and I am so happy that he is happy. I love Karen too. She is great and they are really happy together. They have actually known each other for a long time. Karen's husband, Bill, was a parts manager at another dealership and he won the same trips as my dad did every year so my dad and Karen have traveled all over the world together in a GM (General Motors) group. Bill passed away very suddenly about 5 or 6 years ago. It makes it easier that they have known each other for a long time and she is not a total stranger. It just makes me miss my mom even more.

On top of that, I have completely lost control of the house. Staying on top of it when it is already clean is relatively easy but once I get behind, it seems impossible to get caught back up. Then we went camping and that made the laundry load EXPLODE. I'm still not caught up. Things around here are not pretty but whatever. I'll get caught up eventually, right?

Trevor is awesome. We just love him to pieces. He is a very busy and active 9 month old. He is walking along things now and can push a push toy all over. He has discovered that if he wants to be heard, he needs to be loud and LOUD he is. He is probably about 23-24 pounds, has 8 teeth, loves to eat what we are eating, is an amazing sleeper(fingers crossed, knock on wood, throw salt over my shoulder and whatever else I need to do to not jinx myself) and loves his siblings. I love to see him light up when he spots them at school when we pick them up. He is just a happy, fun little guy whose siblings just spoil him. I can't believe his birthday is quickly approaching! Yikes! Time's flying!

As I mentioned before, we went camping last weekend. We had a great time. It was pouring, and I mean POURING, rain when we were leaving. Everyone thought we were nuts! But down at the ocean it was sunny so off we went.

We went to Dillon Beach, which has become our favorite site. Usually you camp anywhere and it is sandy and grassy and wonderful. As of January, the campground has had to start improvements to keep the coastal commission happy and so we could not camp at our usual place. We were bummed. We had to camp down at the sea wall which the ground is more gravel-ly. We were double bummed. BUT it turned out to be great! We backed right up to the sea wall and a pile of sand and been dumped right at the back of the site next to us. Can you see Evan in the sand to the left?

Right at the back of our trailer was a ladder to get down onto the beach so we just had to "hop" over to play. When tide was in it came all the way up to this wall.

When tide was out we had this great beach right in our backyard. The kids played for hours out there.

Tide either going out or coming in, can't remember, but it would go way out.

Cutest little boy:

We took a few hikes and Trevor loved the backpack.

The kids (Kurt included) build this huge "castle." Tide was out and the discussion was what would happen to it as tide came in. So over the next few hours we watched.

Here it comes:

And there it goes:

It was windy while we were there. So windy in fact, that after 2 days it became quite apparent that Evan was due for a hair cut.

Trevor loved the beach. First I held his hands as he walked around but when my back was about to break I decided to just let him go. He had a blast crawling around, trying to pick up handfuls of sand, throwing the sand. He gabbered the whole time - it was so cute. I now realize that we only got video of him crawling in the sand. No pictures. Bummer.

We tried to bury Hailey.

Kurt had the idea to carve out people in the sand. Instead of building up sand to make a person, he had Hailey lay down and he traced her. Then we used shovels to dig out around her. Kurt spent a great deal of time sculpting and smoothing. I finally went out to him and said "you do realize that you are the only one still out here working, right?" He really enjoyed his art work!

Me and T

Oh, here is a picture of tide being in.

This cracked us up. The first day was cool and windy so it was a bit chilly. When we came in Cody laid down like this. Nose on one heater vent and tail on the other. Silly dog!

And camping at Dillon's isn't complete until you are laying in bed and you hear a cow "Moooooo" right by your head. Gotta love Dillon Beach cattle!