Christina got to deal with these chillin’s

(May 28th)

And keep the twins happy

(Taken by Christina with an ipod)

We got home Saturday afternoon. Kevin called in a drunk driver on the way home. We followed her for a long time, and even passed a cop who had his radar gun out. But no one ever stopped her, so we decided to get away from her. (We followed her for about an hour.)

Later that evening, Kevin picked my brother, Weston, up from the airport. he came up to help drive Christina back. Sunday morning, they got up and out of here by 6 am. Jameson was a little confused where everyone was when he woke up. After spending over a month with friends and cousins, he didn’t really know what to do with himself. It was time to finally get back into our routines, and get our lives back to normal.

Remember those tickets I got Kevin for his birthday? Well the weekend had finally come to put those Foo Fighter tickets to use. Christina was willing to watch the kids for us so we could go stay the night and not worry. So we left around 4 after Kevin got done with work, and headed east. It was supposed to be about a 2.5 hour drive there, which turned into a 3.5 hour drive, because of traffic. We took our time and enjoyed the ride. We got to Quincy and checked into our hotel, then headed to the Gorge Amphitheater.

Sasquatch is a music festival that starts Friday of Memorial Day weekend and goes all day, every day till Monday night. We were only attending Friday. A lot of people camp, but we will never be in that group. Those campers are crazy. So while our kids were at home with Christina…

(Photo courtesy of Jameson and the itouch)

We arrived here

We will definitely be coming back here for more concerts. It’s right along the Columbia River, and gorgeous.

Since we didn’t know the bands playing before, we just walked around and checked stuff out. We got Jameson a Sasquatch shirt, and Kevin a Foo Fighter shirt, and me a Sasquatch jacket. I had thought about the fact we would be outside, so we brought coats. But, I didn’t think to bring anything else. So I was freezing. The good news is, since we were both cold, we cuddled up for the first part of the concert. We watched the “glo stick” dancers off to the side of us. When we couldn’t take it anymore, we headed down to floor in front of the stage. First, we got warm, secondly, we had lots more fun in the crowd.

Kevin got to sing back up for Dave Grohl.

They made a joke throughout the night asking who was camping in “District 9” making reference to that alien movie. It really did look out of control. On the hillside, you can see all the cars parked. Basically, people put their tents at the trunk of their car, and everyone was packed in as close as possible. Then they had port-a-potties lined down the camps. This is why we wont be camping there, ever.

We had so much fun. Thanks to Christina for watching our munchkins so we could have some alone time. It was much needed.

Thursday, May 26th, the sun actually came back out. We hadn’t seen it in a few days. While the other kids were napping , the two older boys got to play outside. Our grass grew like crazy while we were gone, and the boys loved to play in the jungle out back. They added their dinosaurs to the jungle, and then had to feed them.

Kayden and Jameson were being real men as hunters and gatherers. By the way, I got in trouble for taking this pictures and getting too close to the animals. It was not ok that I wanted to take pictures, and Jameson made that clear.

Wednesday, May 25th, we had some visitors. Jayci, my cousin, was visiting her parents on their way to California. They are in the process of moving from Alaska , and lucky for us, we were a stop on their way to their new destination. Also, lucky for us, they had reasons to come to our side of town, so Christina and I didn’t have to pack up the 5 kids. The kids ran and played, or more like, our kids ran and played while Jayci’s sat so nice and quiet. Mont, I think, was a little overwhelmed by the boys. We finally got him out of his shell when we showed him the box of cars. Then he was in heaven. Miss Emmy slept through all the noise, until she got hungry. Then she decided to grace us with her beautiful eyes. At 7 weeks she was just starting to fit 0-3 month clothes= she’s tiny. She was still smaller at 7 weeks then my kids were when they were born. I got to love on her once Ella went to take a nap. (Ella gets jealous.) Before they headed back home, we tried to take a picture. This was the first time all 7 of the “Judd great-grandchildren” have been together. And this was as good as we got.

Back- Jayci (holding Emmy- 7 weeks), Kayden- 5 (Christina’s), Brittany, Ella- 14 months (Brittany’s), Jameson- 3.5 (Brittany’s)

Front- Mont-21 months (Jayci’s), Jenna-15 months (Christina’s), Drew- 2 (Christina’s), Christina

At least most everyone is looking. I especially love my aunt’s feet in the picture. I didn’t crop them out, because I love them too much. Just shows what she’ll do to help us out. All the kids were a little mad that they had to stop playing in order to take a picture. We literally had to “catch” a few of them as they tried to run by. In case you miss Mr. Mont’s face, here is the other picture where some are actually smiling, but not all are looking.

I’m so glad we got to visit with them, and they fought the traffic to get here and home. Who would have thought the place we all got together would be at my house in Washington?

Tuesday, May 24th, Jameson had soccer, so we took everyone. We had Kayden do a trial class with Jameson, while the other 3 kicked the balls around on the field not being used. After the boys were done, we let them all play on the blow up toys. The boys loved the obstacle course and the blow up slide.

The girls loved the castle and and their own obstacle course.

Monday, the 23rd,  turned out to be a sunny day, so we took full advantage. While we got ready, the boys went on a rafting trip. Got to love the kinect.

We headed to Pike’s Market to check out the sights. I knew it wouldn’t be that busy, so we took the strollers along. We took a walk through the market first, to see what was out. Then, we went to the park for some lunch. Christina loved looking at all the “interesting” people in the downtown park. Jameson crashed as soon as he got in the stroller, and didn’t wake up will we got in the car to leave.

Since we had 5 kids and 2 double strollers, that left 1 kid stranded. You would think, the oldest child could walk, but he decided a ride would be better. So Ella found a new favorite seat.

As we were waiting for Kayden to take a potty break, I was standing there with both strollers. I had so many people walk by me and stop and talk about how adorable Ella was. Then they’d keep walking and see the front of the stroller and say, “You have a full load,” or “Don’t you have your hands full?” Ella was just happy to sit up top and eat and be able to give her little smirk at everyone.

Luckily, Drew fit right under Ella’s bum. We also ran into a group of missionaries walking out of the book store. I joked with them for a bit, and we talked about who was serving in our ward, and if they new them. Christina and Kayden finally came out of the bathroom, and we continued on. We picked up some fresh bread for dinner, along with a few other treats.

After the market, we headed over to the Ballard Locks. I have never been, but thought they would be fun to see. When we got there, there was a boat in the lock that was pushing gravel through. The kids loved watching the boat, but didn’t really get what was happening until the lock was empty and they saw the next boat come in.

Ella loved to act like the big kids. We walked across the bridges (which are actually the lock doors) and crossed to the other lock. There is a salmon run on the far side, so the fish can get through the dam. Unfortunately, they were upgrading or redoing the salmon run, so there were no fish to see.

As we were watching, the guy in the tower called out, “All right, kayaks. Come on in.” From around the corner came about 7 kayakers. They entered the smaller lock, and held onto a bar that ran the wall. The locks are about 15 feet deep, so the kids got to watch to small kayaks rise up to our level, and then paddle into Lake Union.

See how far they were at first and then were level with the lake. We checked out a few more things, and headed home. I do hate some Seattle roads, though, so we ended up taking the longer way home, which might have actually been the shorter route. And our first adventure in Seattle was complete.

Thursday, May 19th, we let the kids play while we started packing the car. Our goal was to leave by about 1 pm. Hoping this would be about the time kids would take naps, and we could get a few hours behind us before starting to entertain kids. Oh how we tried. We got maybe an hour worth of naps before all 5 kids were awake, and not all of them took a nap. We’d been on the road about 2-3 hours before stopping for some Tylenol. Ella had a fever. Wonderful way to travel. In the next few hours we had to stop 3 more times. We were up around Shasta Lake, and Jameson said his back hurt. I asked if he needed to go to the bathroom, which resulted in us pulling over. Kayden gladly peed outside, and Jameson didn’t know what to do. Kayden did change his mind about what he needed to do, which resulted in pee on his shorts. One kid now in pajamas. We got back in the car, and kept driving. 10 minutes later, Jameson was puking all over himself. I’m about to lose it, as I’m leaning over the seats trying to catch everything in his blanket, and yelling at Christina to pull over.  As I cleaned with wet wipes as  best  I could, Christina walked the kids around.

We opened as many windows in the van as possible, and I even rubbed some antibacterial sanitizer on the seat to help with the smell. One more kid in pajamas. After I got everything cleaned up as best I could, we rounded up the kids again, and continued on. (Later, I was given the tip that if you rub coffee beans into it, it takes the smell out. Totally makes sense. They have coffee beans at the perfume counter. I will now always travel with coffee beans!)

We gave Jameson a bag to hold, and continued on. A few more turns and hills, and Jameson was throwing up again. I leaned over the seat, again, to hold the bag. Only problem, the bag had a hole in the bottom. So I was yelling to Christina, and she wasn’t pulling over fast enough. She thought we had a bag, and I’m yelling to her that it has a hole. So after she finally pulled over, we got out of the car, and started clean up again. Luckily, most of it was caught in the bag. Unluckily, the car stunk. We’d been gone for almost 8 hours, and hadn’t even made it out of California.

We finally made it to Medford, and stopped for dinner. The kids ran around McDonalds (with no play place) for about an hour. We piled them all back in, and then finally, the kids crashed. We were able to cruise from about 9:30 pm till 12:30 am in Portland. Christina and I switched spots, and I pulled in the driveway at 4 am.

Kevin was awake with lights on, because he was getting ready for a guys survival camping trip. We were home together about 15 minutes before he took off with the guys. You know, we hadn’t seen him in over 3 weeks, but to his credit, I told him to go that weekend. I just thought we would be home sooner, and ended up staying in CA longer.

Saturday, we spent the day trying to catch up on sleep. Our long lost friends came to see us, and Jameson was in heaven. He had friends and cousins. What could be better? Everyone went to bed early Saturday night, only I was awoken at 11 pm by a phone call. To my surprise, the guys decided to cut their trip short. They’d done everything they wanted to do for that trip, and rather than spend the night in the cold, Kevin decided to come home and see us. The kids were so excited to have Dad there when they woke up.

Wednesday (May 18th), the kids played one last time before we packed up to leave on Thursday. They loved riding the bikes, when they weren’t fighting over which one to ride. Jenna was much better on the bikes than Ella, but by the end, she was catching up.

Jameson also has figured out how to take pictures of himself on multiple devices. He is completely entertained by it.

Tuesday, May 17th, was the reason the house was so full. Weston, my baby brother, was graduating. We had 15 people attend the graduation, and that was leaving 5 kids home with a baby-sitter. my dad and grandma flew in that morning, and took Weston out for lunch. The graduation started at 3:30 pm. Luckily, Weston is taller than most of his classmates, plus he had different colors on for his honor status and high gpa. It made him easy to spot.

(He’s in the white with red sash (I don’t know what those are really called).

They had the graduates stand up to be recognized for all their different achievements. Weston got to stand up about 5 times for his gpa achievements. He’s right in the middle of this picture.

We were smart and sat right behind the lights to help with our pictures. Here he is entering and walking the stage for his diploma.

The program was pretty much completely done by the students, which was a good idea, but there were some people that took advantage of being on the stage. We finally made it through everything, and the graduates left the building.

We headed back to the car to meet everyone else at home. Don took off a little early to start getting dinner on. He was busy at home making ribs and carne asada. Once everyone was back, we made Weston take some pictures.

Dad held onto Ella for me. She was pretty much attached to my leg the entire trip. It was brutal.

We couldn’t leave Kevin out of the pictures. You should have seen my children upon seeing their cardboard “Dad.” Jameson told everyone, “Look, this is a picture of my Dad” while standing in the Price is Right model pose. Ella just loved to stare at him.

Jameson wouldn’t stop playing to come take a picture. Steve had made the trip out for Kayden’s birthday which happened to be the following day, so he was able to attend the graduation also.

And here’s us 4 children. The baby is the tallest and now graduated. Christina wore heels, so I look the shortest, but really, she is. I’m not sure why I didn’t end up with a picture with Mom. I know we took one.

I am really grateful for these times when we are all together. It’s not very often. We each live in a different state (Christina -Colorado, Me- Washington, Paul- Utah, Weston- California) all pretty far apart. I am so grateful my family is willing to travel or we would never see each other. Grandma also comes whenever she can, which I am so thankful for. Dad makes sure to bring her when he comes. They only came for the day, and flew out that night after dinner. The next day, Paul and Jenny left back to Utah, then Steve left on Thursday morning, and we left Thursday afternoon. The girls went back to their mom’s house Friday, so by Friday evening, mom had a quiet house again. It went from 17 people sleeping Friday night to 5 people the following Friday night. It was a little crazy.

We didn’t get pictures before church, so by the time we came home the girls were tired and crying. At least Ella was. We got these dresses for the girls at the swapmeet, and everyone loved them at church. I think we should have put the bonnets that came with the dress on the girls, but they were already crying. And, my camera was dead, so the best you get is a blurry ipod pictures. They were still cute, though.

Jenna didn’t care for her dress much. She couldn’t crawl in it, which was good, because it forced her to stand and walk. Ella was just mad the whole way around. Still cute, though.