Last Saturday...

On Saturday, we drove down to Prosser again and met most everyone at Haylee's graduation ceremony. The ceremony went pretty well, and my boys thought the student speeches were much better than the speeches by the adults, lol. (They were.) At one point, they had all the Students of the Department stand for recognition:

 
My beautiful niece was named Student of the Department of Visual Arts!!

After the ceremony and lunch, folks met up at Haylee's mom's parents' for a graduation party. Then we ended up back at mom's house for a barbeque and more visiting. Another full day. :)

Here's Micah with Case:

And Alice with Nana:

Alexis and Quinn:

 
And the baby boys again (Evan is about 6 weeks older than Case):

 
Makenna, Quinn, Noah and Micah:

 
And my mom gifted Blaze with a piece of fake poo, which he took a weird liking to, lol. He took to carrying it around everywhere and was so very happy about it. He took this selfie of himself with it (while trying to get ahold of my phone, lol):

And, here are the guys manning the barbeque that they rigged out back:

 
(That's Charlie (who's married to Cassy), Greg (my cousin, who's getting married to Joe's wife's sister this fall) and Joe.)

And that was Saturday. Whew. ;) 

Last Friday...

And here are some of the pictures of everyone just hanging out together throughout the day...

Micah and Makenna arm-wrestling:

Zach and his son, Quinn, comparing height:

Asher encouraging Alice on the slide:

Some from each family hanging out:

Asher helping Blaze on the swing: (Asher and Micah took it in turns to be Blaze-minders)

Zach tormenting Micah:

Makenna playing with the baby boys, Evan and Case:

 
And a bunch of kiddos heading out into the orchard to play some sort of capture the flag/tag/hide and seek game:

 
Eventually, we headed back to Yakima for the night. (Mom's house was rather full with the other three families who don't live in Prosser, lol...staying in Yakima provided more time for visiting with Nathan's parents...and Noah's allergic to cats.) 

Last Friday (group pictures)...

On Friday, we headed down to Prosser (small back story...Nathan's parents live in Yakima, my mom lives in Prosser...they're about 50 minutes apart) to visit with everyone for the day then take a bunch of group pictures with all the cousins, as it's not often we manage to get them all together.

I'll post pictures of the visiting next, but first here are the group pictures. Here are all 13 grandkids with my mom (Nana) and my grandma (who will be 95 next month!):

Then we moved to the play structure for another picture, this time just with Nana and her "sprouts"...

 

And then Nana wanted pictures with each family of kiddos...here are mine:

 
And Zach's...

 
And Bekah's...

 
And Joe's...

 
And, fifthly, Cassy's...

 
(That's Cassy's dog also.)

Considering the number of kids, I'd say we did a pretty good job with getting these pictures. :) Also, aren't my nieces and nephews adorable?! 

Last Thursday

So. Some of you know that the boys and I have been out of town. Last Thursday, we flew to Washington for the weekend...for my oldest niece's high school graduation. We got home Tuesday night and I'm almost caught up. ;) I'll start, now, sharing some of the pictures...

Thursday was our travel day. We got up early and Nathan drove us to the airport where we said our goodbyes. (He spent the time working and working some more...sadly couldn't afford to take the time off to go with us.) When we landed in Seattle, Nathan's mom graciously picked us up. We headed down to the Seattle waterfront to get some lunch, ride the Great Wheel and roam the wharf and Pike's Place Market...

(On the plane...)

 
Riding the Great Wheel...

 

At Pike's Place after getting some gelato...

 
And then Micah got attacked by a giant squid on our way back to the truck, lol...

 
...but Asher vanquished it! ;)

And then we drove back over the pass to Yakima for the night.  

Many thanks!

Just wanted to say thanks heaps to everyone for the birthday wishes over on Facebook, via email/text/phone and in person! I didn't do anything spectacular to celebrate but feel all warm and fuzzy...the ways I did celebrate were just, exactly right. :) I had a lovely lunch and visit with Deanna ahead of time...got pedicures and did some fabulous shopping in Boulder with Molly...and had a delicious homemade dinner courtesy of Micah (and Nathan). (Micah recently bought himself a deep fryer, so made beer battered jumbo shrimp and deep fried green beans for me. There was a fruit salad for dessert later. Yum!!)

I also received some wonderful gifts that I so appreciate and adore. (I was going to list them but then that felt like bragging, lol.)

And, the boys and I are getting ready to go visit family over the weekend and will celebrate some more there. Hooray!

So, THANK YOU, everyone! Now I must go pack... ;)