Trip to Washington

Finally got all these pictures uploaded. It's a good thing we only get together once a year, it's too much work to post; I take way too many pictures. We are just lucky to have the twins get baptized for us all to have another reason to get together again!

My twin nieces turned 8 this year and got baptized and my parents, Emily, Braxton and I got to be apart of it! Jackson tried really hard to get the time off to join us but his work only gave him half the days off which, what good does that do, but oh well. Braxton and I missed you Jackson and wished you could have joined us!

Anyhow, this post is pretty much all said in pictures. Enjoy!

We took my parents car and left Idaho at 2AM in the morning on Friday June 7th. I'm so glad we left at night because Braxton pretty much slept the whole way! :) 

A picture of Emily and Braxton at our first pit stop for breakfast! Mmmm!

Watching movies on the way to Washington ... movies are the way to go for such a long trip!

Even Braxton had his own personal DVD player and enjoyed watching "Baby Einstein"!

15 hours later we made it to Washington!
The first thing the girls did was get out all there baby toys that they used to play with for baby Braxton!

We than celebrated the twins birthday that Saturday before the baptism!

Grandma and Grandpa Staley got the twins real pearls to wear after they get baptized.
Even Rylee was given a necklace of beads!

Grandma and Grandpa Hawkins got them their own journals with there name on them and a special pen to start keeping a journal.
Emily and I got the girls baptism picture frames.

These are the dresses that my mom made for them to get baptized in. My sister Melanie started the project but as always, my mother saved the day and helped her finish/make them.

A table of a few pictures of them growing up and some cards for people to write notes of love and encouragement on.

Refreshments afterwards! Mmmmm cookies!

I love this picture below because this was taken right as everyone heard Braxton filling his pants! Braxton had a blow out and everyone could hear it while this picture was taken.
He gave everyone a good laugh!

Now just home hanging out and relaxing! 

Rylee showing us how your suppose to do it on the wii.

Ella loved taking good care of Braxton and making him beds to nap on during the day.

Grandpa Hawkins at church holding Braxton in Primary

A barbeque at the beach down the street from Melanie's house.

I really wish Jackson could have been here for me to get a picture with him as well for our little family but this one of Braxton and I will have to do. It was so funny, every time I put Braxton high in the air, he would just laugh and laugh! To bad the camera couldn't show that he was laughing so hard.

The next day hanging out and playing games!

And than we went to a movie! Braxton's first movie in a movie theater. He did pretty good, stayed awake for the first half and slept during the second half. We saw the movie "Epic".

We than went to the park and found some nearby geocaches. There were so many bugs back here by this one, mosquitos especially! If you look in the picture below, the tupperware container/geocache is at the base of those four trees, it's behind some of those leaves.

We even found the home of a homeless man, thank goodness he wasn't there!

Just down the walking path of the geocache we found a lake.

Tons of little tiny crabs would scatter back into the sand after we moved the rocks.

By this time at the lake, one of MANY mosquito bites was nice and visible on my chin. It was huge!

We than went to "Chuck E Cheese" to play a few arcade games!

Chuckie himself even came out to dance with the kids, they had one of my favorite songs on so I joined in on the dancing, eventually the twins joined me for the dancing. We were dancing to "Cupid Shuffle" It's the song that is now playing on the blog!

Free tickets were thrown into the air for everyone who danced.

This is my favorite game! I love playing it because it's the only game where I can get lots of tickets.

Grandpa Hawkins counting all the tickets just for fun, then Ella and Kadie dancing to some music.

Braxton in his very first jeep ride!

Getting prizes for all the tickets we won.

And of course, another geocache was right outside.

And another one! :) 

The girls gave Braxton a bath while I was taking a nap.

Another geocache! :) It never gets old for me.

Than we went to a park.....

...where there in fact was another geocahe! This geocache was poop! I can't believe we found it, yes Emily used a stick first just incase it was real poop!

We than went out for frozen yogurt. Mmmm! 

The morning we left to head back to Idaho. All of us giving hugs and saying our good-byes.

Melanie and the girls sitting on there porch to watch us leave.

Overall, it was a great short trip. I'm glad Braxton and I had the chance to be apart of it. As I have said before, the twins are just amazing. They are so spiritual and have such a big testimony of Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ already and they are only 8! There are many times that I will see Kadie just stop what she's doing and drop to her knees and pray, she doesn't care if anyone sees her or if anyone else is in the room but if she feels like she needs Heavenly Father's help she'll just stop what she's doing and pray. And then Ella at church started reading from the Book of Mormon during Sacrament meeting. She's only 8 and is already reading from the scriptures! These girls just amaze me! Thank you Melanie for being a great example to me of how a mother should raise their kids in the gospel. I only hope I can do the same for my lil Braxton and hope that he too will have a great testimony of the gospel as your little girls do. Congratz again Kadie and Ella! I'm so glad we got to be apart of your baptism day! We love you!