Decorating Easter Eggs

And in unrelated news, Declan's birthday shirt from the Brandts is my new all-time favorite kids shirt ever.

Gang Violence on the Rise in Bellingham, Washington

 This is a photo of Garreth and representatives from about 20 of the contractor management personnel at the refinery. Garreth was obviously not paying attention in the meeting prior to this photo, when they announced that afterward, ConocoPhillips would be taking a picture to run a full page ad in the Bellingham Herald celebrating over two years without a serious contractor injury. Garreth was representing ConocoPhillips Management at the meeting and in the picture, but thought that the picture was just going up on someone's wall somewhere. So of course, the obvious thing to go was to throw up a gang sign for this very serious picture. This is the picture than ran in a full page ad in the paper today.  

Yes, that is the gang sign for "Bloods."  Way to "reprezent" yo.

We are really hoping he is not fired tomorrow.

Sunday at the State Park

It is finally starting to feel like spring!  

Today was a beautiful sunny day and we spent part of the afternoon down at Birch Bay State Park, throwing rocks, collecting shells, and exploring tidepools.   

Today was so lovely that I couldn't help but get really excited for another summer on the coast.

  I know I say it all the time, but I am so in love with living close to the ocean.  

I love the smell and the way the air is just different here.  

I love that summertime brings a constant grit of sand to my floor and never-ending layers of dried seaweed to my sandals.  

I love that my kids are little naturalists and can spend hours on the shore.  

I love the calm, peaceful feeling that being near the water brings me.

After all, I am an Aquarius.  Maybe this is just where I belong.  

Happy Birthday, Declan!

I can't believe my little guy is two!  We are so blessed to have him in our family.

We celebrated a day late since we flew home on his birthday.  We had homemade pizza, one of his favorite dinners, then opened presents and had cake (Thomas, of course) and ice cream.  

Declan is the sweetest little guy ever and we love him so much!

Happy birthday, buddy!

Preston

Thanks to a wonderful husband and an awesome birthday present, I got to fly back to Preston last weekend for the 80th birthday surprise party for one of my all-time favorite people.

It was so much fun to see everybody and to celebrate the best grandpa in the world. 

Declan and I also loved spending time at Nana's house...

...and at Davy's house.  

(We got to be at Ronan and Rachel's birthday party, too!)

But the highlight of my weekend was meeting these two beauties, who will be coming to our house in the next few weeks!

St. Patrick's Day

We had a busy and fun St. Paddy's Day.  Garreth went in to each of the kids' classes dressed as a leprechaun and talked about Ireland.  I don't know who had more fun with that - Garreth or the kids.  I took some video, too, so maybe I'll try to post a little clip later.   

Last night we had some friends over for dinner... no corned beef or cabbage or anything Irish was served, in fact, the only thing remotely Irish-ish (like that word?) was a green grasshopper pie!  I really need to find some good traditional Irish recipes to make each year.  Garreth says as long as it's boiled and served with cabbage and potatoes, you can call it Irish. 

Liam had been telling his class all week that he was "half-leprechaun" so he was really excited when Garreth came in and proved it.

Green milk and Irish flag sugar cookies.

Irish dancing with the third graders.