Memorable weekend...

We had the opportunity to take a short vacation to a small beach community, Seabrook. It's located on the coast, about 2 hours west of Olympia, near Aberdeen/Hoquium.

Seabrook is a new community of beach houses. They're very cute and quaint! They look small from the outside, but they're very modern and big on the inside! This is main house; 2 bedrooms and 2.5 baths. It also has a side mudroom and outside shower, which came in handy later!
Garrett, Cade and I stayed in the carriage house next door! It was a little one bedroom, 1 bathroom, with a small kitchen and living room.
The house allowed pets and was baby friendly! We didn't have to bring any furniture for Cade!

Cade had fun all weekend playing with his friend, Roxy. They played with the plastic bottle together for at least a hour one night!

One of the main reasons to take this short vacation was to try out clamming! Notice, the sky isn't as blue and the sand isn't as tan as Hawaii! It was a cold morning! We were not very optimistic that we would be successful. There's a 15 clam limit per license, and we didn't think we'd find anywhere near that limit. We also thought 15 was a small amount to eat!
So we starting digging...
and digging...
until finally we found one! Once we were able to recognize the air bubbles in the sand and that we had to dig REALLY deep, we were very successful!

I even tried my hand at it and found a few

The only one who probably wished they stayed back in the warmth of the house was Sport. He was not a happy camper that he had to walk through water as the tide started to quickly come up!

YAH! Clam diggers! Our clams and a few sand dollars! We estimated we found about 40 clams (estimate because some of the clams broke as we dug for them)
The next step was to wash off the sand. This is where the outdoor shower with warm water came in handy!
Then we had to take off the shells! Trisha and I formed a successful clam-shelling assembly line.
Almost cleaned clams! We still had to dissect them, oh, I mean cut out the gills and guts. Fun! (Yes, for a biology teacher, it is! :)
Sunday was a much sunnier day, so we took a stroll on the beach again.
Cade and Daddy
Successful weekend getaway with fantastic friends!

Happy Easter!

Whirlwind Florida Spring Break...

Around January, Mom and I realized we had Spring Break together, so we started planning a trip out to Florida to visit Lisa. We planned and researched and planned even more, since this was the first time traveling so far with an infant! (Traveling to HI doesn't count, since we are familiar with everything there!)

Here's a recap of our trip:

Friday night- Red eye flight to Houston. Cade slept the entire time!

Saturday morning- flight to Jacksonville. Cade slept the entire time!

Saturday afternoon- we drive down to Orlando and settle into our hotel.

Sunday, Day 1 of Walt Disney World
Animal Kingdom in the morning
Cade loves the characters! Laughed and giggled evertime we met new ones. Notice our lovely attire! To say it POURED is an understatement. Luckily, we were prepared! We bought $1 ponchos at Target for us and a clear shower curtain and clips for Cade's stroller. Grand total = $7. Had we bought ponchos inside Disney World, it would have cost us around $50!

The rain didn't last too long. Cade on a ride with Lisa and Gammy.

Meeting Eeyore

Laughing at Tigger

The sun came out, so Garrett bought him a pair of Mickey shades.

Sunday afternoon/night: Epcot.

No rain! It's amazing how the sky just cleared up and was blue again!
Japan

This demonstrator was amazing! She could make any animal out of taffy like candy by molding and cutting it. Here she's making a swan.

Monday, Day 2 of Walt Disney World.

We spent the entire day at the Magic Kingdom. No rain! It was HOT!

Cade was able to ride any attraction which didn't have a height restriction. He's getting ready for Buzz Lightyear!

Cade meeting Chip and Dale

Posing with his first Mickey and ears! What a big boy!
We went back to the Magic Kingdom at night to watch the light parade and ride attractions again.

Cade's own sign! (It's really the Arcade sign cut off by another building.) But, pretty cool, huh...
Enjoying a turkey leg!

Tuesday, Day 3: Hollywood Studios.

Forcast for rain in the afternoon, which we thought by then we'd be leaving. We stopped to shop for some last minute gifts and got caught in the rain. Again, it POURED! I've never seen bigger drops before!

Fantasmic hat and High School Musical 3 performance. Notice the dark clouds overhead!

Family pic with Mickey!

We drove back to Jacksonville Tuesday afternoon, in the pouring rain. We had so much fun at Walt Disney World and weren't able to do some attractions. That's ok, we said we'll just have to visit again!

FYI- If you plan on visiting Disney with an infant or child too small to ride height restricted attractions, do Ride Swap! Basically, you avoid having to stand in line twice! It saved us so much time!

Wednesday we visited Lisa's work place. It rained the entire day, so we weren't able to see the infamous 17th hole at TPC Sawgrass.

Sawgrass clubhouse

Drove to St. Augustine and went to the World Golf Hall of Fame

Cade helping Daddy practice his putting

Cade exploring Lisa's apartment

Bye Florida!

Crawling!

Within a week of learning to scoot around at a slow pace, our little speed racer decided he needed to get around faster! He has mastered the art of crawling! Boy, he loves electronics!

When we weren't home, Kyle let Cade play with Garr's Xbox control! OH OH!

Earlier this month he even showed us that he can hold his own bottle.

Leaning on the coffee table. He can only stand and hold on, not cruise yet.

Happy eating his puffs.

We are getting ready for a trip to Florida to visit Lisa during Spring Break! We wanted to make sure this hat we bought Cade during our Christmas trip to HI still fit! It does and he loves wearing it! Doesn't he look so big! Geez...can't believe he is 8 months old already!

Cade is also starting to pop out more teeth. He was only developing his bottom teeth; 4 of them in a row! One on the top was finally starting to poke through last weekend. Today when I checked, he now has 3 more poking through! Poor guy has 4 tops trying to come out at once! Despite the trouble most babies have with teething, it doesn't bother Cade's demeanor too much.