Trip Quotes

I had my siblings and friends from Utah write me their favorite quotes from our recent trip to Utah.  Hilarious!Dave said:  Obviously when Libby said (after doing some awesome sledding I think) "my Asian ancestors would be so proud."

• Debbi Egan Randall

  It was a blast!! Sarah: "I only have hot blows", and "That was inappropriate."It
• 

  8:59am

  Soren Barker

  "Should I lie?" -Yes. "Go fish!"
  -Trish, do you have any Nancy Pappy? "OH! I do! I do!"
• 

  8:59am

  David Randall

  Hahaha. Classic moment
• 

  9:10am

  Brian Randall

  "The first time I met Ben he was a thumbs down but the first time I met James he was a thumbs up"
• 

  9:11am

  Bryn Dalton Randall

  "I think James wishes I was his Mommy."
• 

  9:45am

  Rachel Randall Cottle

  Rachel: "Libby have you even touched that salad I got just for you?"
  Libby (condescendingly):"did I break your heart, or did I break chuckarama's heart? I think chuckarama's heart!"

  Sarah: "if anyone wants to get me a straw they can!"

  Sarah: "if anyone wants to come play pretty pretty princess, number 1 they need to come in the family room."
  Rachel: "whats's number 2?"
  Sarah:"...."

  And don't forget Libby giving the stare down to the girl one table over.

  Rachel: "Ben did mommy go to the gym?"
  Ben: "yes"
  Rachel: "did she go to the circus?"
  Ben: "yes"
  After several more questions...
  Rachel: "is Rae Rae asking a lot of silly questions?"
  Ben: "YEES!!"
• February 10
• 

  11:38pm

  Erika Phillips

  Sarah: sometimes I spank my own bum.
  Erika: why do you spank your own bottom?
  Sarah: well I usually always spank it softly.

  Sarah: Ty Stevens isn't my friend because he has a different last name than me.

Seen by David, Brad, 6 more

A Visit to George

Last year for President's Day I got this crazy spontaneous idea that we should go to UW campus and see the statue of George Washington.  It ended up being super fun.  Even though it was rainy and yucky, we walked on campus and then took the kids to one of our favorite restaurants on the AVE.
We don't have many family traditions that are truly our own, but we decided to make this trip one of them.  It was beautiful weather this time (but cold)!  Here are my 3 favorite shots from today, and a shot with George.  (Libby knew he was dead already this time, so it wasn't traumatizing in the least :)
It is fun to watch the students hustle and bustle around.  I LOVED college and being on campus is kind of magical.  And eating at Scholtzy's is DELICIOUS!

Of course my best pic of Ben is with a dirty face.  He was so excited about the ducks.  He spent lots of time quacking and growling at them.  

SHOREWOOD STATE MEDALISTS

After 2 VERY LONG days at the Tacoma Dome (which has to be just about the worst venue in history), Shorewood High School has 2 state wrestling medalists.  We were OH SO CLOSE to both a 1st and a 7th (or maybe even higher), and it leaves us hungry for next year, but we are proud of our boys (and the coaches)!

Tim Hester (took 2nd in 2007 and 1st in 2008) and Matthew Floresca (2nd place 2013)

Coach Norton, Erca (8th), Matthew, Coach Clark

Erca is the first heavyweight in Shorewood history (that we know of) to go to state.  He placed 8th in his first state appearance.  He is only a sophomore, so we expect great things!

Happy Valentine's Day

I LOVE Valentine's day.  Maybe because I love pink, and red, and hearts, and LOVE and everything about telling people that you love them.  Because I was so busy and on vacation leading up to this Valentine's day, I didn't even decorate the house.  My water aerobics participants were disappointed that I didn't dress up in heart socks or anything.  But, I take the girls to pick out Valentine's cards (they thought you needed to get a whole box of cards for each person--it was hard to talk them into getting just 4 boxes instead of 20.)  We got Ninjago, Transformers, and (of course) 2 different Disney princess boxes.  Sarah needed to write her name on about 8.  She only got 4 done before she had a definite meltdown.  Libby needed to write her name on 8 for preschool friends and 24 for her classmates.  That was brutal torture for her.  We did it over 3 days, and it was still tough.  I take for granted how easy it is for me to write.  When you are just learning (and you don't like doing it) it can be really tough!

Anyway, while we were picking out cards, I let them choose a box of chocolates for Derek.  This is what he woke up to on V-day.  (It was lucky he had a partial day off ;)

We made a Valentine cake--coconut.  While we were making it Libby kept shouting, "That frosting smells SO bad!  Get it away from me!"

I made the mistake of getting them MnM valentine men that had stampers and stickers inside.  We had a lot of stamps to wash off of just about everything before I found and tossed the stamper parts.  Sarah stamped up her whole face 3 different times.  

Libby and Ben enjoyed the stickers.  Ben discovered that if he put one on Derek's leg, then ripped it off, it inflicted some pain.  So Ben kept running up, putting on stickers, ripping them off and running away laughing.  

A Birthday Bash

My niece Paige has a birthday near mine, so we usually celebrate together for our Norton birthday party.  This year was no exception...but the crazy part is, she is turning 18.  Next year she will be away at college.  Insane!

This year (yes, she is taller and much more fashionable than I am)

2006--the oldest digital pic of our birthday celebrations that I have.  She has come a long way :)

Fun Trip Moments

We did a grandkid valentine's day photo shoot.  They were so cute, and so squirelly.  I hope Bryn got some better shots than I did!

Soren and Libby singing "Am I a Muppet, or Am I Man."  It was hilarious to hear Libby singing that.

We had a fun Birthday Combo party for me, Brad, Soren, and Grandpa Kelly  because we all have birthdays in January/February.  My mom made some seriously amazing cupcakes!

We went to see my friend Laney (the one that introduced me to Derek) and her daughter Cora.  Ben was showing Cora how to high five.  He also showed her how to dance on top of the furniture and run around the house screaming.  She showed him how to eat the snack he asked for (which he ate none of, and she ate all of ;)  It was super fun!  It will be even more fun as they get older.

Ben loved sledding.  I think.

LOVE walking to church with this crew!  It is only 2 blocks from my parents' house--but lost of people still drive to church.  

Chuck E Cheese was top on Libby's list of fun things we HAD to do in Utah.  So far she still doesn't realize there is one right by our house in Seattle.  So, we only have to go in Utah.  We were lucky that Kimmie and Micheala could come with us!

Libby with the Chuckster!

How I kept the kids quiet on the plane.  Thank goodness for flights with lots of empty seats!

Somehow I missed getting pictures at Ruth's Diner, with Uncle Ron and Aunt Jan.  Also at the Mexican Leatherby's.  We did some really good eating on this trip!

Nancy Pappy

One of the things I have really looked forward to is having my kids be ready to play games.  They are finally getting there!  Libby and Sarah played several rounds of Go Fish fairly successfully on Thursday.  But the deck of Go Fish cards we had wasn't a very big deck.  So, I wanted to find a new deck that would allow more people to play.  I couldn't find one in 3 stores.  Who knew?  But I found a Barbie version, Go Bling.  There were 2 decks of cards, both with sets of 4.  Perfect.  The cards were numbered, but then I realized we couldn't use both decks of cards by the numbers because there would be 2 sets of 1s, 2 sets of 2s, etc.  So Emily came up with the idea of naming the cards.  AWESOME!   We had a great time naming them and writing their names in with Sharpie.  Libby even helped with the naming.  Some of her best--Nancy Pappy (apparently Barbie's dog in a purse), Kitsy and Linda, and Shelley's accessories (just some random accessories.)  Some of my best, Laptop Lindsey, Dashing Derek, Kickin' Ken (he had a soccer ball in hand).  Anyway, you get the picture.  After Libby and Sarah went to bed we had a blast playing.  I have never seen David so punchy. Nick was hilarious.  Anyway, for 99 cents, it was by far the best game purchase ever.
Some of the best Go Fish quotes:
Libby to Dave when someone asked for something she had:  "Should I lie?"
Dave:  "Yes, lie."
Libby:  "Nope, I don't have it."

Sarah:  "I want to play the REAL GO Fish, not the Barbie Go Fish!"

Sarah--to Grandma:  "Do you have any Shelley Starfish?"
Grandma:  "Do you, you can't ask unless you have some?"
Sarah:  "Let me check"  (flips all her cards face up) "No."

Libby (when someone asked for something that she had, but they didn't ask her):  "I have that one, ask me, ask me!"

Libby or Sarah when drawing from the fish pile:  "I got (fill in the blank with name of card drawn)!"

Soren:  "Does anyone have any Ponytail Pony?"
Emily:  "What?  It's Ponytail Polly--"
Soren:  "Not on this one"
Emily:  "Let me fix that--Oops.  Now it looks like Ponytail Potty."

I love playing games with my family.

Meeting baby James

The real reason we came on this trip was to meet baby James, my brother Brian and his wife Bryn (of Black Hat Media) had a baby.  This is the first RANDALL COUSIN!  So exciting!  And he is the cutest, easiest baby I have ever been around.  It is truly amazing.
Here are the first encounter pics.

Sarah wanted to get right up close.

Ben REALLY REALLY wanted James to get on the binkie bandwagon (James isn't really convinced he loves binkies yet).  Ben made several attempts to get James to take this binkie.   It turns out Ben is a lot like his mom who also loves to share the things she is passionate about.  When Ben started trying to share the Husky blanket by nearly smothering James with it--I had to draw the line.  But it was endearing!

Libby LOVED holding James.  She is a great cousin.

Snow! Snow! Snow!

I am so amazed by the amount of snow in Centerville this year.  It is WOW!  The first few days we played in the snow about 4 times a day.  Once more family came, we spent more time indoors, but what a blast!

Sarah wanted to put her chin in the snow for this one.  They all ate their weight in snow I think despite the fact that my mom kept telling them they would get giardia.  Hard for a Seattle kid to miss this kind of a feast!

Ben and Gramps

This is the snow coming off of the metal shed roof.  It created this awesome cave.  

Ben looking rakish in his hat.

My favorite pic of the trip thus far

A Kid and Her Glasses

Crashing at the end of a sledding run (glasses undisturbed, thankfully!)

Libby got glasses, you will remember, in July.  This was a totally new experience for me.  I don't understand the world of eye issues at all!  The doctor told us that because she needed such as strong prescription  she wouldn't be able to handle it all at once, so he would give her close to what she needed and we could come back and recheck after a few months.  I posted on facebook about it and one of my friends suggested that she might need bifocals...well when I recently observed her trying to read some text by pulling off her glasses and moving them in and out to try and focus the words I decided it was time to go back to the eye doc.  Sure enough, he gave her bifocals (good diagnosis Emily Cummings!).  Anyway, we got the new glasses a week ago Thursday.  On the Tuesday after we got them I was in Bremerton for a training.  Libby managed to lose the glasses on the bus.  After lots of prayers and speeding I made the 4:00 ferry back to Edmonds and got to the bus barn about 10 minutes before closing time.  With a flashlight I was able to find the glasses where she had stuck them down between the seat and the wall of the bus (so they would be safe while she "rough housed"  according to Libby).  Anyway, the next day we flew to Utah where we went ice skating at a wedding reception (I know, sweet, right?) and she fell (after taking off her skates) and bent the frame of the glasses.  Luckily Grandpa fixed them...but in just over a week these glasses nearly gave me a heart attack twice.  I don't know if I can take it. But she is SO stinking cute.