Seattle -- Hanging at the Baker House

We spent a lot of time hanging out at the Baker house. Our kids loved playing with their cousins and with all their cousin's cool toys.

These first two pictures pictures are of Caden on the night we arrived. This is around midnight Austin time and Caden was still going strong despite only sleeping about 30 minutes since 2:00pm our time.
Caden LOVED this guitar! He carried it around with him any chance he got. He knew how to put it on, turn the guitar to twist the strap so it didn't hag so low, and then strum. You can see the strumming of his left hand in this shot.
He also loved the crazy purple glasses. Sadly, there was a little disagreement between the twins on who should have the glasses and they broke as Caroline tried to, uh, remove them from Caden's face.

Despite losing the classes, Caden still enjoyed the guitar the entire time we were in Seattle. He could make sounds with the strings (though the batteries were intentionally removed by the Bakers). Every once in awhile, he sang while playing. He wrote a nice song that went, "MOMMY, MOMMY, MOMMY!!! MOMMY, MOMMY, MOMMY!!!" that was accompanied with fierce plucking of the strings.
Ella taught the twins how to jump over this toy.
Caden loved exploring all the toys. Here he is carrying a box of some sort of blocks. You can see a little bit of the mess behind him. We might have left a mess behind when we left Seattle. We had every intention of cleaning up after our kids, but, well, my bad. Sorry Michael and Amy.
Our little guy sure likes musical toys. Here, he is playing some drums.
With all this playing, Caden did sleep pretty well. Sometimes, he slept in a pack 'n play...
And sometimes he slept in bed with mommy...
But his blankie, paci, and Curious George were always with him. Also, Caden did climb out of the pack 'n play a few times this trip. Thankfully, he did not bring that habit home to his crib.

One of our kids favorite activities was riding wheeled vehicles outside down a little hill. They wanted very little help when doing this and were surprisingly good an maneuvering.
This next picture happened AFTER we were done riding bikes one day. We survived riding crazy vehicles down a giant hill at breakneck speeds with little to no adult supervision without any injuries but Caden managed to fall over in the flat garage while walking inside!
Thankfully, we've seen bumps just like this before so we weren't worried. Ella said that she thinks she accidentally tripped him (which is very sweet of her to admit) but I know she didn't. Caden just fell. With him being top heavy, his forehead took the brunt of the fall. Caden calmed down pretty quickly, we gave him some medicine for the pain, and continued playing like normal. The bump completely disappeared in a couple days.

The Baker's house was on a great lot that backed up to a wooded area full of trails. One day, we went hiking back there. Here is Caroline with her walking stick. She saw the cousins with them and decided she needed one as well. She also has a wild blackberry in her other hand. There were all sorts of berries growing just off the trails.
Caroline enjoyed eating the blackberries. She also enjoyed picking and eating some blueberries from the Baker's backyard.

Caden was exploring and looking at some wild blackberries.
The twins were leading the pack at this point...or maybe they were way behind...I don't remember.
Cousin Ella posing on a large rock. She is growing up so fast.
Cal was having a lot of fun, though he didn't love getting his picture taken. He and I raced most of the way home. He frequently notified me that he was winning. :)
Ella's 8th bday occurred while we were in Seattle. We celebrated by letting her choose an entire meal. She chose homemade mac 'n' cheese, cinnamon apples, pickles, and fruit pizza. That was all we were allowed to have (though Michael and I snuck in some sausage). Ella was super excited and declared it the best meal ever anywhere.

Here is Ella posing with the fruit pizza she decorated.
We then did some video chatting with the grandparents before opening presents. Everyone was very happy to talk to Grammie and Poppa. Caden even open mouth kissed the screen several times.
Then it was time to open presents. Cal kept saying this was the best birthday party ever! What a sweet guy.
Caroline helped open presents. She wanted to make extra sure we didn't miss anything from this bag. Here is Will playing with one of Ella's new games. Basically, you put a card on your head but don't know what it is. You then ask "yes" or "no" questions and try to figure it out. This was a fun game but it can be tricky to play without multiple adults. For example, I had a card with a picture of a ketchup bottle. I asked if you eat it and they said, "part of it." After getting a number of cryptic answers, I found out they were considering the ketchup AND the bottle when answering questions. :)

Our little snuggler curling up with Ella.
Another fun thing we did was make smores in a fire in the backyard. One absolutely brilliant Baker addition was putting some peanut butter on the smore. We also made some with nutella.
Caroline loved her smore. She ate the entire thing and would have had another had we let her.
Instead of eating a smore, Caden preferred running around and playing on the slide.
Making smores and running around outside was easily one of our kids favorite things we did on this trip. In general, our kids enjoyed playing with their cousins at the Baker more than any of the parks or other activities we did on this trip. Now that we are back in Austin, they are sure missed!