It's my party

I'm officially four now. Four years ago I looked like this tiny little guy. Hard to believe.



Mom and dad had a great birthday party for me this year. The theme was "demolition/implosion" since I love watching videos of buildings and other structures falling down and blowing up. The house was decorated with construction safety tape, yellow, black and white balloons, and we all got to decorate and wear construction helmets.


To make sure that Fiona didn't feel left out, mom and dad bought her a present, too. She's been obsessing over a frog "pillow pet" and so got one while I got a dog pillow pet. Fiona was quite happy.


My first pinata, in the shape of a number 4


Fiona gave it a pretty good whack

Here I am pondering what to wish for before blowing out my four candles on the ice cream cake cupcake


Fiona was thrilled with her cupcake!


Grandma and Grandpa supervising our cupcake consumption

Nana and Papa enjoying the festive atmosphere


Fiona and Uncle Matt comparing muscles


My new favorite toy - a scooter - that I've been riding in the house since the weather's been lousy in the NW


The obligatory family shot

The Love Boat

A few weekends ago, when the sun was shining (a rare thing this summer), mom, dad, Fiona and I took a ferry ride across to the peninsula from Seattle. We wanted to check out the progress on nana and papa's beach house in Port Ludlow.



Since it'll be a while until the place is done, we decided to take advantage of the low-tide and still make a day of it digging in the sand and collecting shells.




Fiona and I found a friendly little ladybug who wanted to play with us. I had to restrain Fiona from petting the ladybug too hard.



After some time at the beach, we headed to Port Gamble for ice cream at the General Store. What a cute town (sorry, no pictures)!

Cool Kids

After months of rain, clouds and general gloom, summer has finally come to our home here in Issaquah. Hooray! This is a shot of Fiona and I keeping cool at grandma and grandpa's house in Redmond.

Just for a frame of reference, here we are a few days ago, bundled up for an after-dinner walk:

Fiona's Solo Trip to the Zoo (with mom)

While I was at preschool the other day, mom took Fiona to our local zoo for a fieldtrip while the sun was briefly peeking out of the sky. Sounds like it was a great trip!

Here she is shaking her shakers at Zoomazium:


Playing the drums with her fabulous rhythm:

Feeding birds at Willawong station - she loved how the parrots and other birds had no fear and would stand on her fingers and stick. Mom was proud of how brave Fiona was while feeding the birds:

We love cupcakes!

Mothers Day

We decided to celebrate Mother's Day this year by visiting Remlinger Farms. The weather was wonderful and we were lucky to have grandma and grandpa join us. Enjoy the pictures! By the way, you may notice that grandpa is missing from these photos - that is because he took all them. Thank you, grandpa!

I Am Special

At school, each student gets to have 2 special weeks to share more about who they are and their favorite things.

This past week and current week are mine. Here I am in front of the photo montage of all things Gabriel:


I also got to bring in two extra items for sharing time last week - first I brought in my "rainbow kite" and then on Thursday I shared my favorite suitcase I take to Hawaii. Yippee!

To not leave Fiona out of the post, here is a picture of Fiona showing her love of hats - she sure is special:

Sports Camp

I started sports camp a few weeks ago (though I took a break yesterday due to a cold) and am really enjoying it. We had 3 weeks of soccer, followed by 3 weeks of basketball and then t-ball.

Here I am before and during practice at the Issaquah Community Center:



Fiona is getting the hang of kicking a ball and throwing, too, while watching over in the toddler playzone.

The Martians have Landed

It was father/kid night at preschool recently and the theme was Space. Here are pics before dad and I went off to whoop it up with my classmates. Fiona was bummed that she couldn't go with us, so decided to get into the spirit of things at home.