Day Out With Thomas

As I mentioned in the previous post, Gideon has really developed a love for trains. A fun way he has been able to enjoy trains is with the stories of Thomas and Friends. He really enjoys watching these engine friends at work. So, when we discovered there was a Day Out With Thomas at the Snoqualmie Railroad Museum, we knew what his birthday present was!

Gideon was definitely excited about going!

And this experience did not disappoint Gideon one bit! When you buy tickets you get to choose which time slot you want to take a ride on a passenger car pulled by Thomas. So when we arrived we walked around the grounds at the railway museum just to see what else was going on, then got in line for our train ride.

It was a 45 minute train ride, including a view of Snoqualmie Falls at the end. Gideon was really excited that Thomas was pulling our passenger car.

After the train ride we explored the other activities – there was a lot to do! There were various tents set up with different Thomas activities.

Gideon really enjoyed watching the model train set up. And of course Thomas, Annie & Clarabel were on the tracks.

Each child got to pick a temporary tattoo to wear.

One of the tents was filled with toy train tables for kids to play with. This was a busy tent with lots of kiddos!

Sir Topham Hatt was there. He ran a tight schedule, so kids got to meet him at his scheduled times.

Each time Thomas pulled into the station to unload and load for the next train ride, kids had an opportunity to meet Thomas and get their picture taken in front of him. This was fun seeing all the kids eager to meet Thomas! And Thomas even talked.

There was also a tent with Thomas books that were read, Thomas videos played and Thomas coloring sheets to color. Of course there was a tent with Thomas & Friends merchandise to purchase. There was a live band that we listened to as we ate lunch. And there were many photo ops with large movie posters throughout the grounds where you could take your picture.

And of course you could also just sit on the platform and watch Thomas taking passengers on their train ride.

Here is a video from the day

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We still talk about this day being a highlight of the year. Dustin and I enjoyed the delight and joy this day brought to Gideon. We just had such an enjoyable time as a family. Day Out With Thomas is an event that travels around the country to different railway museums. We highly recommend it!

Gideon’s 2nd Birthday

It has been a full 4 months for us! We welcomed our second child, Jeremiah Frederick into our family! We celebrated Gideon’s 2nd birthday. Marie was the matron of honor in one of her best friend’s wedding. Dustin turned 30, including a surprise party to celebrate. I will be posting about these events in the upcoming weeks.

This post is about Gideon’s 2nd birthday. Because Gideon turned 2 close to when the baby was born, we decided to go for very simple. As usual, we wanted to have a party that included elements Gideon enjoyed. Over the past year Gideon has developed a great love for trains (much to his grandpa Frederickson’s great thrill as trains bring him great joy too!) So, we decided to have a train birthday party at Country Village in Bothell, where there is a running train for kids to ride on.

Gideon enjoyed riding the train with his friends.

And getting in the engine car!

There was also model trains set up to watch after the train ride.

We had initially planned on having the remainder of the birthday party at the picnic tables at country village, but since it was raining, we finished the party at Gideon’s grandparents house who live near by. There were trains set up for the kids to play with.

And train pictures to color.

And of course a train cake! Making this cake was so much fun and even better was the delight it brought Gideon. When we showed him his cake the morning of his party, he was really excited about it. As we were heading to the car to go he asked about the train cake, making sure it was with us!

And Gideon definitely enjoyed the cake!

 

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter from the Morache’s! Gideon wants to share about the love of Jesus today!

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Last night we read the good Friday story in Gideon’s Jesus Storybook Bible. Afterwards Dustin was telling Gideon how much Jesus loves Gideon, mommy and daddy and how Jesus died for our sins. When Dustin tucked Gideon into bed, Gideon told Dustin “Jesus loves Gideon, Jesus loves mommy, Jesus loves daddy. Jesus died for Gideon’s sin, mommy’s sin, daddy’s sin.”

This is true for all of us today! Happy Easter everyone!

Time Together

We have been having a lot of good quality time together lately and it has been wonderful. Here are some of the fun things we have done the past month.

Putting all the rocks from the front yard in Gideon’s dump truck.

Coloring on rainy days.

Filling cups with water and transferring it from one bowl to another – Gideon loves playing with water!

Going to the zoo. This is the African exhibit. Gideon loved playing the big drum!

Making tunnels, bridges and tracks for Gideon’s trains! He loves trains and we have had a lot of fun and spent a lot of hours playing with them!

Going to the beach – we have two close to us (Golden Gardens and Carkeek Park). It has been nice this week, so we have gone a lot! Gideon’s favorite activity has been throwing rocks into the water. Both beaches also have playgrounds, so he has loved a lot of time on the slides. We have also brought his football and basketball. He’s had a lot of fun with daddy playing catch in the grass.  And the train tracks going by both of these beaches, so of course the highlight of our time is running to watch the trains go by!

As we are still in the waiting time for our baby, it has been wonderful to not have much on the calendar and get a lot of quality time together!

 

Final Days as a family of 3!

We are getting close. Our due date was yesterday and we are getting so excited to meet this newest member of our family. We are in the waiting game now, which is a unique time of uncertainty and anticipation.

It is hard to think about life as more than 3 and yet when we think back to our time before Gideon was born we thought the same thing. Now we can’t imagine life without him and don’t want to go back. I am guessing the same is true with this one! We are soaking up time with just Gideon as the amount of time with just him is about to change.

This past Sunday Dustin’s dad captured some fun moments just the 3 of us. Here are some of our favorites!

 

 

 

 

Books of the Bible

It has been amazing for us to see how much information Gideon can retain and memorize and in a quick amount of time. All the literature that talks about kids being sponges at this age is so true!

So, we have been working on many different learning opportunities with him to maximize this ability – ABCs, Numbers, French vocabulary. We recently started having him recite books of the Bible. I remember how challenging it was to memorize these later in life, so we thought, if he can quickly memorize now, why not get these in the brain early!

Here is one of our memorizing sessions over dinner.

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Boats!

Last Saturday we were looking for a fun outing to do as a family. We came across The Center for Wooden Boats in South Lake Union. It was a blast! We were true Seattleites and ventured in the rain.

You can walk along the decks and see all the different boats and explore their indoor exhibit for free. We also learned they give free boat rides on Sundays, have a tugboat story time for kids, and have an event where kids can build boats and sail them. They also offer sailing lessons, boat building classes and more! It was such a great find as there is so much to do for all different age ranges.

Gideon had a blast! He loved walking up and down the docks looking at the different boats. Indoors at the exhibit they had a little craft area where you could color, cut out, and build a paper boat. Gideon had a little help from mommy, but did enjoy coloring. As usual he made lots of friends, including a boy at the table next to us who finished making his paper boat around the same time we did. Gideon went over eager to play boats with him!

Here is a final word from Gideon about the experience!

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Coffee!

Last fall Gideon had the stomach flu. We bought some pedialyte and tried giving it to him through a syringe, as we had done in the past. Since he was older he didn’t enjoy that method as much. We remembered we had little demitasse cups, so we gave that a try. He loved it! He drank the pedialyte right up! He really enjoyed having a coffee mug like mommy and daddy. Even after he was sick he would ask for “coffee” in the morning.

So, on special occasions we let him have “coffee” with mommy and daddy! This video is from Christmas morning.

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On our anniversary getaway we found a little demitasse cup with photos of Seattle. We bought this for Gideon as a present. When we gave it to him, he giggled with delight and put the cup to his face, hugging it! We told him he now had his own coffee mug. He was elated!

December Highlights

Though December is now a long and distant memory, I wanted to recap some highlights for our family.

Swanson’s Nursery had live reindeer, a camel and a running train. We went as a family the end of November, but I also took Gideon and the boy I nanny for. They had such a fabulous time! Gideon could have stayed and watched the trains all day.

We went to Candy cane lane as a family. This is a tradition Dustin and I have had the past couple years. It was fun this year to see Gideon’s enthusiasm for the lights!

We were super bummed to miss the annual Morache family gingerbread house creation (due to Gideon’s hand, foot and mouth disease). The three of us decided to try a gingerbread train. Gideon had fun and we learned a lot!

Gideon came down with hand, foot and mouth disease so we stayed in much of the past 2 weeks of December. The second week Gideon climbed out of his crib, so we also put the toddler rails on Gideon’s crib. He is loving his new big boy bed!

It was a more low key Christmas for us.

With a lot of immediate family time. We did enjoy a little bit of time with our extended Morache family on Christmas Day and Marie’s parents came December 29 and stayed through early January.

Celebrating 5 Years!

I have been absent from our blog for over a month. This was not my intention. In December Gideon came down with hand, foot and mouth disease so there were 2 weeks that were really intense for us. During the second week he climbed out of his crib, so we transitioned (earlier than we expected) to his toddler bed. This required vigilance with him to get a new bed time routine down. After Christmas my parents were here for 2 weeks and we are now just getting back into the swing of life (which always takes us a week after any major interruption to our normalcy). Over the next couple weeks I hope to post about our December, but before too much time had passed I really wanted to share about a big milestone for the Morache family – Dustin and I celebrated our 5 year wedding anniversary! 

We had a wonderful time celebrating! Dustin surprised me with a few things that were just wonderful. We enjoyed two weekends of celebration – we were so grateful both sets of parents were able to watch Gideon so we could enjoy this celebration. The weekend before our anniversary we did an overnight, while my parents took care of Gideon. Dustin had done the planning, and knowing I like surprises, he keep quiet about those plans. Oh, was it fun to have the weekend unfold! 

We took the bus so my parents could have our car. This was really fun because we felt like tourists in our own city! We started by heading to Northgate to do some shopping with Christmas money we had. On the way we had lunch at Stanford’s – the restaurant we ate at the night Dustin proposed. We always enjoy going there and reminiscing about that night! 

We then headed to our hotel to check in. I had no idea where we were headed, but the destination of the bus said downtown, so I assumed that’s where we were going. Once we reached capitol hill, Dustin alerted us to our stop. We were not staying downtown but at Bacon Mansion on capitol hill! 

It is a cute, quaint bed and breakfast. Our room was adorable. There was a wardrobe to hang our clothes, a sit down vanity where I could do my hair, and the charm of an old mansion. Dustin knows me so well! We got ready for dinner and set off by foot. We had a nice walk, enjoying the older homes along our path. We headed towards 19th Ave E and I was racking my mind to figure out where we were going for dinner. Once we arrived I remembered, “oh, yes this is my favorite restaurant!” Haha, it is amazing what pregnancy brain can do! We ate at Kingfish Cafe – a southern restaurant with amazing food and southern hospitality! 

http://thekingfishcafe.com/about/

We had a great corner table where we enjoyed good conversation about the joys and challenges of the past 5 years. It is amazing how milestones can give a broader perspective. Although just talking about the last 5 years didn’t drastically change our relationship, we were able to more tangibly see the growth in our relationship over this time. It gave me a new perspective on where we are at. I see our marriage at a new level, a new place of maturity, and ready to move on to what is next for us and our relationship. It is so valuable taking the time to reflect and celebrate!

We were stuffed after dinner, but still wanted to enjoy dessert, so we walked to Dilletante Chocolates on Broadway. Dustin had an americano, I had a cappuccino, and we shared a tasty salted caramel dessert. We enjoyed talking about our relationship, ways we wanted to serve each other better, Gideon, our next baby, and areas we want to focus on as a family. We then walked back to the Mansion and relaxed. We were excited about sleeping in for the first time in a long time! Although, we ended up falling asleep by 10 pm anyway. 

In the morning we enjoyed continental breakfast at the Mansion and leisurely read our books in the library! We were surrounded by old books – it was great. We checked out and headed to Broadway. We went to a coffeeshop and talked about creative projects – my writing goals and some creative outlets Dustin was excited about. Then we continued on Broadway and window shopped, stopping at Jai Thai for lunch. Then we headed downtown and spent time at the Farmer’s Market and finished our time by reading at Storyville Coffee. It was such a nice leisurely day, meandering through the city, not dictated by a schedule or places we had to be. We enjoyed time to just talk, read, and enjoy time just the two of us for an extended period of time! We then got on the bus and headed home. It was so fun to see Gideon! He and my parents had a wonderful time as well! 

The weekend of our anniversary Dustin’s parents watched Gideon at their house, and we had a nice two days to ourselves at our house. We spent this time primarily relaxing, but also spent time praying through our year – where we sensed God calling us to focus on for this year. We then spent some time talking about how to practically apply what we heard. Dustin and I love that our anniversary is at the beginning of the year. It is our tradition to spend time celebrating our anniversary and then also spend time praying and planning for the year ahead.  We have found it really unifies us as we head into our next calendar year and year of marriage. This year was no different. We came away at peace and on the same page about what this year holds for us.

This year is a full year – we are adding a second child to our family and we have 3 weddings of close friends and family in 3 different states. We sensed God directing us to focus on savoring life (amidst what could be a very busy year) and healthy rhythms and habits for our family. With a lot to prepare for and adjust this year,  it isn’t the year to tackle a whole bunch of goals. We do have some goals, but over all we are focusing on savoring what is in our life and having rhythms and habits that help our family thrive. It feels good to have this focus and be working side by side toward this end. 

One final surprise from Dustin just before our anniversary – he added bead set diamonds to my wedding band. This is something he had talked about when we got married, adding diamonds to the band at our 5 year anniversary. Well, a couple weeks ago my wedding band went missing. Dustin reassured me he was on the hunt for it 🙂 The night before my parents left, Dustin “found” the ring. He picked it up from the jeweler and gave it to me. He wanted my parents to be able to see it before they left. It is beautiful and so fun to wear! 

We had a wonderful 2 weekends of celebrating 5 years of marriage! We are grateful for the ways God continues to refine us through marriage and draw us closer to Him and each other! He has been so good to us!