Visiting the Cook Family

We had such a great visit in Washington at the Cook home. A few months previous I had a Family Night lesson about living within our means and resisting instant gratification. I wanted our family to pick something that was around the $100 - $200 price range that we could save up for and buy. A few ideas were put out there, one of them being a trip to Washington to visit Sophia. (Can you guess who suggested it? Okay, I had a little influence on it too.) We took a vote and Washington won. We found a jar and pasted a picture of the Cook family on it to remind us of our goal. We collected cans and bottles, emptied our pockets and purses and put in any extra money we could. This was going to be our famioly vacation for the year and we wanted to have plenty of spending money. It was so fun to have a goal the whole family worked so hard on reaching together. We got to go for a week with Russ, then he flew home and I stayed another week with the kids. It was a great trip besides the fact that we all got the flu and were cleaning up vomit for the first 4 days. After we all felt well enough we went out for 1 day on the town before Russ had to leave the next morning.

Alexis hanging on for dear life at the Seattle Aquarium.

Leland loved this bear and wanted to hug it.

We're being eaten by a giant octopus.

Ferry ride from Bainbridge Island to Seattle.

The girls found a dead Jellyfish and had fun poking at it.

Leland loved Sidney's cat Snikers. He even was saying her name by the end of the trip.

Smile!

Leland got soooo excited when he saw this tractor. We had to let him go sit on it. Tractor was one of his first words.

Alexis with the flu. She was the first to get it. Doreen will be embarassed that I posted a picture of her house unfinished but it really worked out nice that she didn't have carpet put in yet. It made it much easier to clean up the barf.

And I just loved this picture. This is the Snohomish Falls. They were beautifull. Alexis was very disapointed there was only one waterfall. I think she thought there were going to be a bunch becasue we kept saying we were going to see the fall(s). When we got back she said "it was the worst day of her life." She was in a pretty bad mood all day. Thank goodness the rest of the trip was so fun to make up for it.

We got to go to a really cool kids museum. Alexis got to touch fossilized dinassaur dung.

Leland really took to Sidney. She proved the scripture "They loved him because he first loved them."

Ashton was another of Lelands pals. He was so sad to leave his Ashy.

And this was just plain funny! This is for you Sophia. Love ya.