Wednesday, April 24, 2013

skagit valley tulip festival



i grew up in washington state and had never been to the tulip festival until this year. we even had a lakehouse up near mt. vernon for a while. i remember driving past the fields one year and seeing the tulips from a distance, but that's about it.

i wasn't planning on going this year either, in fact, it hadn't even made it on my radar until my friend, ruth, told me that she was heading up there and that it was only five bucks for adults and free for kids ten and under. the weather was supposed to be great, so i piled the kids into the car and we made the hour drive up to mt. vernon and met up with the sines. we went to roozengarde.


it was a beautiful morning. nice and sunny (the only drawback to it being so sunny was that we were squinting a lot in the pictures) and we were shedding layers pretty quickly after arriving. we hit some of the big fields first and took a bunch of pictures with the kids and then headed across the road to the actual gardens.


i fully intended to do my girls' hair this morning, knowing that i would be taking lots of pictures of them. then i promptly forgot. i also debated picking their outfits for them so they would be fairly neutral against the flowers but it violated my rule of allowing independence in clothing choice. i may regret the hair and the outfits a little, but they're still cute regardless, right?





jonathan had napped on the way up and was still waking up for the first half hour after we arrived. i pulled him out of the stroller for this one and he wasn't too sure about it. 
 


 


here are some pictures of tulips that violate my general rule that unless you are planning on selling the landscape photo, you should throw a person in the picture. everyone would rather see a picture with someone in it, right? nevertheless, i've included a few just to bore you and test how loyal you are to the blog.



the girls had fun finding buds that had fallen between the rows that they could reach from the paths.


















these ones are from the actual gardens. the gardens were beautifully landscaped and had so many varieties of tulips. we got over there around lunch time though and the kids were getting pretty hungry, so we didn't look around a ton before sitting down to eat. by the time we finished eating, it was starting to get pretty crowded (i can't imagine going on a weekend!) and i needed to head back for an appointment. we still got to see a bunch of beautiful tulips though.















on the way home we stopped at an ice cream place that a friend recommended to ruth. i bought a "single" scoop that fed our whole family. the ice cream was good, but the best part was that i bought some great looking tomato starts while we were there. nothing makes me happier than healthy tomato starts. well, not much. 

the rest of the day was filled with whiny, sunburned children that didn't get naps, including some epic emotional breakdowns from diane. looking back through these pictures has been a good reminder that it was worth it.

once a year.

Saturday, April 20, 2013

march and some of april


it's been a while since i've done a photo dump. here are some from march and april. sorry if i've already posted some of these. i was too lazy to go through and check if they had already made it into another post.


these first few are actually from a mom of one of randy's students. she was outside during her daughter's lesson and snapped a few pictures of the kids playing outside. of course diane smiled right at the camera for her.




i think i've said it before, but these are diane's "do no wrong" sunglasses.






this is how jonathan spent the first two weeks of april - runny, chapped nose.






at the zoo.


these are from a sunday walk as a family.










everyone but me (including randy) has been sick for most of april. it has gone in waves and vacillated between cold and light flu symptoms, with a little pink eye mixed in there. diane spent a couple days curled up on my lap and slept a lot. it has been a pretty miserable, quarantined month and i'm happy to say that it looks like we are through it.



we got a fancy nancy tea parties book from the library and madeleine spent much of a day recreating her own tea party for us. it was fun to see her get into it.


this was us watching lds general conference, in the middle of our sickness.






randy and i got out on a date last weekend with our friends, the sines. i went to law school with jared and they have recently moved up here. it was a much needed escape from the house for me and we had a great time with them.


you wish that you had hunter green safety netting to match your hunter green carpet, don't you?