Backyard Barbecue with Friends

A few weekends ago we went to our friends PJ & Karen's house for a barbecue. We had a lot of fun!

Karen made delicious mojitos. Yum!

PJ and Chels prepping the veggies for the kabobs, apparently it's really exciting!

Karen and Courtney, cheers!

Fruit and veggies, with shrimp, chicken, and beef kabobs. YUM!

We had a bonfire afterward and roasted marshmallows. I of course stuck my marshmallow right into the fire, my favorite way to roast it :)

We had a lot of fun, enjoying a sunny Seattle afternoon and nice evening with good friends. I love summertime!

Goodbye Meg & Maggie!

Last day in Seattle... Meg & Maggie at the Seattle Center.

Thanks for coming to Seattle, we had a blast! See you in a few weeks :)

M&M in Seattle, Part Two

On Sunday we took an adventure outside of Seattle. We took the ferry to Whidbey Island, which was Meg & Maggie's first ferry ride! We went to a cute little town, Coupeville, that was having an arts and crafts festival. It was fun! We ate lunch at Toby's Tavern, and with the family name, how could we not?

The Tobys outside of Toby's

Meg & Maggie

Chels and I at Toby's

This is a picture of the harbor in Coupeville

After lunch and spending time at the fair in Coupeville, Dan suggested we go look around Fort Casey and the Fort Casey State Park, which is just about 10 minutes up the road. Fort Casey was built on the bluffs by the Army in 1890 to protect the entrance of the Puget Sound. It became a State Park in 1950 and it's beautiful--you can walk around the fort, climb up and down the ladders, see the guns, etc.

Here's the fort

Investigating a staircase, leading down from the bluff

Boo & Dan

Meg & Maggie in the lookout

Me investigating the lookout

One of the "disappearing" guns. It's called that because the guns could be lowered, so approaching boats would not be able to tell there was a fort there at all. The fort is all built below the bluffs. Pretty neat!

We could climb the ladders to investigate the guns

Chelsea pretending to be the lookout

Hello! peaking through the lookout

This cool path I nicknamed the "path to Narnia"

I wanted to see a unicorn when walking through the magical path, but all we saw was this cute bunny instead :)

A picture from the back of the fort looking out on the Sound

We drove north to the top of the Island so we could drive through Deception Pass. It's called Deception Pass because when George Vancouver "discovered" it in the 1790's, he originally thought it was a bay and not a straight. We walked on and drove over the Deception Pass Bridge. We also drove through part of Deception Pass State Park, which is very near Oak Harbor, the town where Dan went to senior year of high school.

The water was so aqua blue!

Taking a walk on the bridge

We got to explore some neat places around Seattle. The Pacific Northwest is so beautiful, especially on sunny summer days! It's fun to share it with visiting family and explore more outside the city ourselves, too. We drove back to Seattle that night and had a pizza dinner party at Boo & Dan's. It was a very fun day!

Cousins in Seattle!

Chelsea and Steph's cousin Megan was in town last weekend, visiting us with her girlfriend Maggie. We had so much fun! This is Meg's third trip to Seattle in August in a row, the previous two years were first for our wedding, then Boo & Dan's last year. It's a tradition now! Chelsea & Steph's Dad is brothers with Meg's Dad, and the two families live about an hour apart in California so the girls (plus Megan's sister Jillian) grew up and spent family vacations together. This was our first time meeting Maggie and we love her! She's a sweet, wonderful person and fits right in with the family :)

We had brunch at Boo & Dan's on Saturday morning, then headed to downtown Seattle to see Pike Place Market, walk around the pier, and Seattle Sculpture Park.

Maggie & Meg, so cute!

We had a little snack at the park outside the market before walking down to the pier. It was a beautiful, sunny Seattle day. We had great weather the whole time they were visiting, lucky ducks!

Here's a picture of the bay from the sculpture park

Chels and I on a deck up from the pier.

Stay tuned, more pics to follow from our fun adventure--yay for cousins visiting Seattle!!!

Cute Pets and Fun Times in Seattle!

Summer has just started in Seattle and it's almost the end of August! Yikes! Here's what we've been up to: my cousin Molly and her husband Matt came to visit Seattle in late July. His family lives in central Washington, and they came to Seattle for a day to visit. Molly and I grew up together--our moms are sisters and we lived near each other until we were about ten or so...we had many fun times on Grandpa & Grandma's farm :)

We met at Pike Place Market

Molly and I with Rachel the market pig

Pucker up, piggy!

Molly and Matt

There is a picture of my mother's family that I have been searching for since I first saw it at a family reunion last year...My Auntie Gail (Molly's mom) had a copy and sent it along for me, along with a whole packet of photos. I love it!

Look at how young my Mom is! She's on the left with the long blonde hair who looks like me :)How sweet! There are many family pictures I have never seen before from my Mom's childhood, and she also sent me some cute baby pics of my sissy Bon, me, and Molly and her older sister Sierra. We were so cute! It was great to see Molly again, and finally meet her husband. We reminisced about the "good old days" on the farm--looking forward to the next Hilliard family reunion!

Chelsea began about four weeks straight of pet-sitting after that. This cute little one is Zane. Chelsea sits for her and her brother Jake pretty often, they are both very good cats and super cute!

Jake is such a nice cat

Except for when he jumps in the laundry!

After Jake & Zane, Chelsea sat for our friends Stacy and Lindsay's dogs Bart & Aggie. They are so cute! We have a lot of fun with them, and Chelsea loves to sit for "the girls".

Lindsay and Aggie

Aggie is a precious promise!

We also started a Sunday dinner tradition with our friends Danny and Brian. This is their precious little dog Satine, isn't she so cute?

All smiles :)

So many cute pets this month! We loved it!