Traveling Days

Thursday, June 10th we headed to the Greensboro airport at around 2pm for our 4:45pm flight to Seattle, WA. We managed to get 5 suitcases, 3 car seats, 3 backpacks, 3 carry-ons and 4 kids into the airport. The people at the airport were all very helpful and patient getting us checked in and all the bags and car seats checked. We ended up having lots of spare time to pull out games and toys and play before our flight.


We had about a 3 hour layover in Cincinnati where we ate some Chick-fil-A and played some more. At almost 10pm NC time we boarded our plane for Seattle. We let the kids watch a movie on our borrowed portable DVD player and then got them settled down to sleep. They managed to sleep about 1 1/2 hours before we landed in Seattle. Our only issue was on our descent into Seattle when Bastian woke up with his ears hurting and cried for a while. Other than that the kids were amazingly well behaved!



We landed in Seattle at about 10:15pm (1:15 NC time) and managed to navigate the airport subway and elevators to pick up all our bags and car seats and find the location to pick up our shuttle to the hotel. We waited about 30 min. in the chilly Seattle night air for our shuttle and headed to the hotel. By the time we were unloaded and settled in our hotel it was about 3am NC time. What a long day! I managed to get a few hours of very interrupted sleep (due to my littlest) before getting up and ready to head to downtown Seattle to get Dave his passport. I guess this needs explanation. Dave and I applied for passports about 6 weeks before we were leaving for our trip to Canada. About 10 days before we left I got my passport and Dave got a letter from the passport agency saying his birth certificate was not valid for passport application. We did not know what to do and couldn't talk to anyone until the Tuesday after the holiday weekend. After a couple of phone calls we figured we didn't have time to wait for a birth certificate, send it back and have time to get our passport back so we ended up scheduling a special appointment in Seattle in the hopes that he would manage to get it that day. My dad picked us up at our hotel and we got all our stuff loaded in the van and headed downtown with the kids to the Federal building. We dropped Dave off and walked around Seattle with Opah while we waited for news. We saw some cool totems and toured the Gold Rush Museum.



We also peeked into this glass shop which had some really beautiful things. I made the kids wait right in front of the doors and look from there, where Bastian danced around to the Michael Jackson music playing in the store. That made me just a little nervous! The price on the salmon chandelier (upper right) was $25,000!


We got a call from Dave around noon with the good news that we would get his passport, but had to go back to the office just before they closed at 3pm to pick it up. We had a little more time to kill, so we ate some bread from a bakery and some other snacks and walked down by the bay and around Seattle some more. We picked up a postcard to send to Grandmom and Pop-Pop and headed back to the Federal building where the kids and I waited outside and wrote our postcard. At about 3:15pm Dave came outside with his passport and we were all very excited!

We loaded up the car and were on the road up to Whistler, Canada. Woohoo! We were all very excited to be on our way!


We had a six hour drive with some great views of Horse Shoe Bay and a stop for an English Fish and Chips dinner. Yum!

Halloween

We started our Halloween celebrations with cupcakes for Corbin's class party. It was fun (and just a little bit frustrating) to make our two dozen spider cupcakes, which I thought turned out super cute!

We had a fun and full Halloween day! I surprised my kids by digging up the remnants of my Sydney Bristow costume from many years ago, which they all enjoyed trying on.


When it came to pumpkin carving time, we had a table full of kids and pumpkins! After Mommy cut off the tops the kids got to work cleaning out their pumpkins, including Hero's neighborhood friend, Ngan, who joined us for the day. Mommy carved the pumpkins according to each kids specifications (silly face, scary face, fangs, etc.)


For dinner we ate a jack-o-lantern faced chicken pot pie and drank blood-like juice with gummy eyeballs floating in it.



After dinner the kids all got dressed in their costumes. Poor Bastian started running a fever Halloween day and had to stay home with Mommy and Beckham, while we handed out candy. Hero had had the H1N1 virus the week leading up to Halloween, but was fever free and well enough to go out trick-or-treating, while poor Bastian started coming down with it that day and could not. We had our little monkey, Yoda, Luke Skywalker, a ballerina and lumberjack Daddy who took the rest of the kids out in the rain to trick-or-treat around our neighborhood. When everyone returned home we drank cinnamon steamers (a sweetened hot milk flavored with cinnamon extract - yummy!).




These are the finished products of our pumpkin carving efforts.



During the day Daddy also labored over our house-o-lantern, which was up in our front window with a strobe light flashing behind it. He did a great job and it looked very cool!

Dixie Classic Fair

I chaperoned Corbin's first Kindergarten field trip to the Dixie Classic Fair. As a class we saw many farm animals, visited the petting zoo and watched the pig races and sheep herding dogs. I did not get many pictures as my hands were full with my 3 month old, but we had fun and enjoyed our time together. We were able to visit Hero's artwork and went home with our favorite fair treats - fudge, cotton candy and a gourmet rocky road caramel apple!

Father and Son

Daddy with Beckham, his little mini-me after his first hair cut. What cute boys!

Miracle of Miracles

So after almost 9 full months away from blogging, here I am trying to get caught up. Although I love to blog it is a task I have been dreading, knowing that every day I wait I get more and more behind. I've also felt with piles of laundry still to fold or dishes in the sink or one of the many other household chores left undone that blogging was something of a lesser priority. Here I am almost 9 months to the day after Beckham was born tired from over a week of sickness in my house, 8:30am church and a list of other things, giving up my much treasured Sunday afternoon nap to get just one, but hopefully more than one blog post accomplished. I will try to keep things short and sweet so that it will be easier for me and less daunting to those of you trying to read.

And so I will start with a couple of pics of Beckham ranging from 2-3 months smiling, finding his feet and sitting up in his Bumbo seat. He has been the most smiley of babies and every time someone has looked his way or talked to him, he has returned their attentions with the biggest of smiles. We love our smiley boy!

Baby Beckham is here!

Beckham Kellan Westbrooks was born around 8:30 this morning, June 12th. He weighed 10lb 0.8oz. Beckham has a full head of brown hair, which I still need a good picture of, but we will post more pictures very soon. Labor and delivery went well for both Mommy and baby and both are healthy and well. At 2 weeks overdue we were anxious to see Beckham and are very excited he is finally here!




Hero, Corbin and Bastian love their new brother and are very excited to hold him, gaze at him and bring him home tomorrow!

Saturday Morning Cartoons

I couldn't resist taking a picture of the scene Saturday morning when I came downstairs. The kids all snuggled up together on the floor watching Saturday morning cartoons.