Park

On south Whidbey Island, there is a park called Discovery Park that I remember helping to build back 15 or more years ago. We've visited the park a couple times since living here.

If Tayla had it her way, she may never leave the park. It is one of her favorite things to do.

Tayla loves the swing in particular. We decided to make it easy and stick both of the kids in the same swing.

Fishing

One of the first things I did when we moved to Washington was go fishing. The kids didn't have patience to sit in a confined little boat for very long so it was rather hard to fish with them.

I caught a sun starfish while fishing and Tayla poked it a little.

We went crabbing a couple times and caught some dungeness crabs. Tayla didn't want to risk touching it.

Dungeness crabs have to be at least 6 1/4 inches in order to keep them.

While it's possible to just throw them in boiling water to cook them. I went a less stinky way and shelled and cleaned the crabs before baking them.

Camille took it from there and prepared the crab with butter and garlic.

I'm not much of a crab eater myself, and crab is so annoying to break apart and get the meat out that I'd just assume not eat it.

Liam

When we first moved to Washington back in March. Liam was only starting to move himself around on the floor. He found our plasma ball and tasted it.

He's such a silly kid. Here he is wearing my hat.

Monterey

Back when we were spending our last few weeks in California, I had to go to Monterey for some military processing. We all decided to go together and have a little vacation and see the sights.

We went to the Monterey Aquarium that is a very popular place to visit.

This particular angle of the aquarium was also seen in Star Trek 4, where the whales were living. There were no whales there.

Liam and Tayla both thought the fish were interesting.

We went down on the beach for a little while.

On Fisherman's Wharf, a fellow was letting kids hold his parrots.

Tayla was nervous, but Liam was just confused.

I saw this bicycle type of contraption that looked really cool. I'd love to have it, but it probably wouldn't fit in the bike lane on most roads.

Space Museum

Back in February, we went to visit the Discovery Museum in Sacramento. There were many child-friendly displays. We had a lot of fun dressing up and playing with the buttons as if we were inside a spaceship.

There was a section of the museum that had some animals like spiders, lizards and the rare Child Eating Bunny of This Small Cubby-Hole. It was pretty big.

We had fun until Tayla climbed up on a stool to look at one of the displays. I turned my back for a couple seconds and Tayla fell off. She must have knocked her head pretty hard because she immediately started screaming very... very loudly. :(

Tayla

I know it's been a long time since I last posted, but late is better than never, right?

These are pictures from earlier this year... January and February, in fact.

Here's Tayla enjoying a bedtime story with me.

She loves sitting on the counter doing here hair and make-up.

Everywhere that Tayla goes, Bear is sure to follow. Bear is obviously hungry. Maybe he's testing out the cat food to make sure it's safe for Miss Kitty.

The Zoo

One of Tayla's favorite toys was her Schleich giraffe so one day we decided to take a trip to the Sacramento Zoo during a time when we could feed the giraffes.

Tayla was amazed at how big the giraffe was compared to her toy.

While we took Tayla to feed the giraffe, we let Liam hold Tayla's toy.

The helper picked out some food that the giraffe would like to eat.

Tayla thought that the giraffe's tongue was funny.

When time for feeding the giraffe was done, Tayla was disappointed.

We went on to look at other animals like the zebras.

Camille and Tayla make a very good pair of Kangaroos.

Tayla liked the pink flamingos as well.

Really she liked all the animals and we had a lot of fun.