Seattle 2012...reunited!

For those of you who don't know, my parent's moved to Seattle back in June for my dad's new job. This has been such a great move for them but has been a hard adjustment to not have them close. My parent's and I have always lived in the same city (well except when I lived in Nampa for like 6 months, but that is still really close) my whole life. Any way, we wanted to go and visit them and see their new home while the weather was so beautiful. And oh boy was it beautiful!! It was mid 70's the whole weekend and nothing but sunshine! We couldn't have asked for a better weekend.

We left Friday afternoon, and flew down because Ava is such a terrible traveler right now in life. And it worked out great! She had 1 melt down each direction but was easily distracted both times. Then we came back Monday afternoon. It was of course too short of a trip, they all will be, but was such a fun and refreshing visit! It was so nice to see where they are and the things they are doing. So here are some pics and video's from the weekend :)

Sorry for the blurry picture :/ But this is how Jon kept Miss Ava entertained while we waited for our 1st flight lol, A LOT of trips up and down the escalator! We got there about 1.5-2 hours early but then didn't have any wait at all!

 This is when Ava saw Grammi for the 1st time. Just Dad picked us up from the air port so she didn't see my mom until we got to their apartment and as you can see she was so excited! It was the sweetest thing I have ever seen!! And from this moment on she was attached to my mom!

Not long after we arrived Mom and Ava took Molly for a walk to get the mail and Mom had 2 leashes all ready to go :) She knew Ava would want to walk Molly with her haha And she was smart to give her the stretchy leash that did not actually lead Molly any where haha

We went to see the boats at the Locks Saturday morning, this was a lot of fun...until I got sea sick from walking over the water so much and watching it go through all of the changes :( But it was still so beautiful to see and I'm so glad we went!

Sculpture at the Locks

Walking across one of the bridges...yes we did bring the stroller more for stuff than for Ava...mom said she would hold Ava and she sure did! :)

We went to the Tacoma Zoo (Point Defiance Zoo) on Saturday and had such a blast! We went at a terrible time because it was too warm and a lot of the animals were sleeping but none-the-less we had a blast and totally loved the aquarium attached to the zoo!!

Watching the sharks!! :)

Watching the elephants 

And monkey's...

Here we are at the underground viewing of the seals, this was such an awesome display! It was so beautiful and the seals were swimming all over the place!! It was so awesome! I am trying to show Ava a seal that is coming up close to us in this pic...

The walrus's were not so active haha! They were so fat and nasty lol, but still fun to see! 

We were so excited we could feed the goats here! This is Ava's favorite thing to do at our Boise zoo, but they only had  2 goats here and they were super fat and lazy!! They were not as exciting to feed as ours but she did still love it :)

Feeding cramming food in the goats mouth lol

They had an amazing play area at the zoo!! I was very impressed!  They even had a small splash pad.  The only bad part was she was SOAKED and I had not brought any extra clothes. So we bought her a t-shirt in the gift shop and she cruised around in a t-shirt and diaper while we waited for Poppi to pick us up. I was feeling pretty guilty as it started to get cold but she is one tough cookie and she still had a blast! But that will explain the other pics you will see of her in just a pink tee haha

Here is a little video of Ava on the splash pad :) She sure loves these things!!

Being silly after we ate at the zoo :)

This is the sweetest video of my mom giving her kisses and she is totally eating it up! It just melts my heat how she leans back for more from her!! It was so neat to see them still be just as close as ever, even after being apart for 2 months! :)

When Mom forgets pants your blanket becomes a skirt lol

This is how Ava was "helping" grammi make breakfast lol. I'm sure Mom's kitchen is much cleaner with Ava gone, but she did say it is pretty quite! 

The girls with their morning drinks :)

Poppi got her a balance bike at the consignment shop we stopped at :) It is so cool! Look like a little KTM motorcycle :)

We drove past Dad's work Sunday morning and right next to his work are wild Blackberries!! YUM! So we got out and picked a bunch for the drive (which I ate pretty much all of lol). It was neat for Jon because he remembers picking them as a kid in Oregon until his fingers were all blue and purple from the juices :) It was a fun stop to make on our trip :)

My little bag of blackberries :) 

We went to Alki beach on Sunday and had sooo much fun, just like everything else we did! ha! Everything was such a blast!! I knew Ava loved the water here at home but she had not been to a beach before...well as no surprise to us she LOVED it! We pretty much had to pry her away from the beach screaming!! 

Jumping waves with Daddy, she was so funny with this because when they started she would cry every time he picked her up. He was worried about the waves scarring her but oh no, not with our crazy kid! She was mad he was taking her out of the water! lol

This picture describes our weekend so perfectly!!!  If you read the previous post you know how bad of a diaper rash we have been battling with Ava for like 2 weeks now, well it wasn't any different when we left. It was still really bad. So we came prepared with lots of creams and between mom (although mostly mom) we kept her changed about every 1.5-2 hours (and when home bathed with every poop, which was about 8 times a day :( ) for the entire weekend. BUT when we left it was looking better, BETTER! And today we are almost back to normal! Yay! Praise God! We are so thankful. Oh and with this particular change she thrashed around screaming off of the changing pad and had sand in both ears lol! 

One of my favorite family pictures of us without a doubt!! Except for one thing...it's missing Gus :( We missed him so much on this weekend trip. It felt weird not having him there but we are so excited for all of the exciting things happening for him right now! 

We rented the coolest 4 person/pedal bike with a child seat on the front! :) This thing was so much fun! Ava loved it too! She kicked her feet on the front and squealed and laughed the whole time, it was too cute! 

Mom's awesome self portrait shot :)

Cute little video of us peddling and Ava kicking along like she was pedaling with us. She has such life in her! I just love her so much! The name "Joy" is such a perfect middle name for her. I never would have guessed when she was born how prefect that name would fit her. She has such joy for life and you can see it in videos like this one.

Our little sand baby :) She couldn't get enough of it!  Or the water!

Thankfully our non-car-napper would get tired enough to snooze in the car between adventures! So Poppi did a lot of "taking the long way" to places so we could milk these for as long as we could! :)

Ava and Poppi snuggling watching Veggie Tales Monday morning while Mommy packed stuff up. It was really neat to see these two bong this weekend. She has always been a G'ma's girl (for both Jon's mom and mine) and not really interested in G'pa's, so it was so fun to watch her warm up to my dad and love on him. This trip was just so amazing in so many ways. We are so thankful we were able to take this trip. It could not have been timed better! 

Ok, ok last picture! She was so tired on the way home but wouldn't sleep on the plane. So she lounged on Dad's lap and kept pretty occupied for most of the flight :) Poor Jon's legs were pretty cramped after the trip but when flying with a toddler you do what you have to do to survive! lol

I know this is a crazy long post but I hope it gives a true appreciation of how thankful we are for every moment of the trip. And it is so fun to have a blog and be able to show all of our fun adventures. Miss Ava seemed to enjoy it as much as we did! She was happy and playful the whole time. She did not sleep well at night, but did sleep, she did not nap well during the day, but did nap and even though her whole schedule (which is very much a ritual at our house!) was thrown off this girl put on a smile and embraced every moment. She didn't let Grammi out of her sight and spent the whole weekend literally attached to her! She drank all of her milk cups in Grammi's lap and went every where that Grammi did. It was so sweet to see them pick up right where they left off.